The Times That Weren't
by Alveric
Summary: With memories of events which never happened intruding on their dreams, SG-1 are faced with the task of rescuing those stranded on Destiny, but when proof of the impossible arrives for Cameron, Sam finds their lives taking a different turn. Cam/Sam
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Chapter 1**

Stargate Command, October 1997

Sam stood on the ramp in the embarkation room watching Ernest Littlefield being pestered by the medical staff. She gave a little smile as he immediately quieted when Catherine Langford spoke to him softly. She began walking down the ramp to head to the infirmary herself for the routine post-mission check-up when she saw Catherine looking at her. The elderly woman stopped her with a hand rested lightly upon Sam's own forearm.

"What is it, Catherine?" she asked as she was pulled aside from the group heading out of the embarkation room. Colonel O'Neill stuck his head up from the doorway.

"C'mon, Carter." He waved her forward and she raised a hand to him in acknowledgement with a quick 'yes, sir' which seemed to placate him.

"I have to give you something, Samantha." She stuck a wrinkled hand into one of the pockets of her jacket and produced a small velvet bag held closed with a drawstring. Sam's eyes narrowed in curiosity as Catherine's wizened hands untied the string and upended the bag into Sam's open palm. An elegant, platinum band tumbled against her skin, and a light silver chain it was looped into spilled around it, she could see arcs and filigree etched into the metal, they formed patterns she couldn't make much sense of.

"Catherine, it's beautiful, but I can't accept this." She looked at the older woman in confusion as Catherine forced Sam's fingers closed over the ring with both of her hands, the paper-thin skin stretched taut over the knuckles gone white with force. "This must be precious to you, if Ernest gave-" She was stopped by Catherine's vehement shake of her silver locks.

"No, Samantha. This ring is meant for you. It is yours. It has always been yours." Seeing the confusion in the younger woman's eyes she sighed and closed her own, reliving memories from a lifetime ago. "I met a man in Egypt, in 1929." She took Sam's hand in her own and started leading her out of the gateroom as a medic came looking for them, looking impatient. "That man gave me this ring and told me to give it to you, he also told me to remember the name Daniel Jackson, then he disappeared. Of course I would have thought he was mad if not for one thing." A dawning comprehension made its way across Sam's face.

"He came through the Stargate," Sam supplied in awe, Catherine nodded, "but how would this man know about me and Daniel unless... time travel? Then it _could_ be possible!" Catherine just shrugged and lifted the hand Sam was holding the ring in and opened her fingers, pointing to the inside of the ring where an inscription read 'To my beloved Sam, who took me to the stars...' Sam raised her other hand to her mouth as she read the poignant words. "Catherine, this... this is a wedding ring."

"Yes it is, Samantha, and I think whoever originally gave it to you will someday find you again." She led the younger woman into the infirmary before patting her arm fondly and moving off to Ernest's side while a nurse came to check her vitals as well. Sam closed her hand around the ring again as her mind raced.

"Whatcha got there, Carter?" asked O'Neill from where he was being fussed over by another nurse.

"Just something from Dr. Langford, sir." she replied absently and smiled while Daniel looked at her oddly.

"You handing out gifts, Catherine? Where's mine?" Jack asked feigning a hurt look, Catherine chuckled and waved him away.

"It is only something Samantha dropped long ago which I have carried for a while." She looked at Ernest happily and gave his hand a squeeze. "I felt it was time to give it back to her." Jack just looked confused.

"So no gift for me then?"

"Jack." Daniel said with an exasperated sigh.

"Daniel." Jack deadpanned. Sam smiled and snuck another look at the ring before putting it in a pocket until she could think of something to do with it.

* * *

Stargate Command, July 2005

Landry walked into his office from the briefing room and Cameron walked up to Daniel at the TV as he was scratching his chin. They'd just watched Daniel give a presentation on the myths of Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table and the possibility of finding a cavern complex under Glastonbury Tor, and Landry had authorised them to have Prometheus scan the tor with it's Asgard sensors. This could be the chance Cam was looking for to get the band back together.

"That was fantastic! You talk to Carter yet?" he asked trying to inject enthusiasm into his voice, he thought there might be a better chance of getting Sam to come if it came from Jackson.

"Uh, yeah. She can't make it." Daniel said trying not to look at him. Cam couldn't hide the disappointment and surprise in his voice.

"What? This is huge! We could be on the brink of another major discovery of Ancient technology here." He tried not to sound petulant at least. Vala watched him from her seat at the table before getting up and standing just behind him with a scrutinising look on her face.

"Look, I'm sure she'll be interested in whatever we find." Daniel said, tapping his shoulder and turning quickly to leave the room as he saw Vala approach. She didn't follow him though, instead looping her arm through Cameron's and leading him towards the door.

"Hmm. Hey, try playing hard to get." she offered and he turned to her with a scowl.

"Man, look who's talking." he groused and she gave him a brief look. They were quiet until they got back out into the corridor.

"A woman likes to be chased to be sure, but she doesn't want to be brow-beat or dogged into submission." she began as if explaining something to a small child. "If you want my advice-"

"I don't." he interrupted, but she carried right on.

"-you should try to be more subtle, make yourself visible to her, available, but just out of reach. Make her want you and you'll win her heart." He stared at the alien incredulously. She'd been on base for two days! How the Hell had she figured anything out about him in so little time? He'd barely mentioned Sam at all.

"What are you talking about? I'm trying to get her to rejoin the team." he tried to allay her suspicions, but it didn't seem to be working at all. "Vala, not that it's any of your business, but Carter's just a friend, one I've been hoping to work alongside for a long time."

"Sure sure, whatever you say." She turned to him with a teasing smile as they entered the elevator. "Now how about you take me somewhere fun? Are there any gambling establishments nearby? If you lend me some of your Earth currency I'll pay you back." At his glare she pouted dramatically.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 731 days relative

She stood outside his cabin door and was about to hit the signal button when she heard a loud crash from behind it. Her fingers froze over the panel as her eyes widened in alarm at the sound which was soon followed by his muffled voice crying out and another crash. She looked down at the panel beside the door and moved her hand from the signal to the door open button and stabbed down hard, but nothing happened.

"Cam!" she called out through the door as a series of almost inaudible thumps and thuds sounded through the metal bulkhead. She quickly pried the panel away and was soon entering an override sequence which caused the door to slide open. She darted inside in time to see her friend standing amidst the wreckage of his cabin, facing towards the starscape outside the porthole. She could see a light sheen of sweat on the back of his neck and he was breathing heavily, but when he turned to face her she could tell it wasn't from the exertion of tearing his furniture to pieces. His eyes were like those of a wounded animal, the pain she saw, as recognition of her came into his gaze, was palpable. "Cam! Wha- what's happening?" She took a step forward, but stopped, confused, when he took a step back, the slats from his broken bed shifting slightly under his boots.

"I can't do this, Sam." His shoulders were slumped, his arms slack at his sides until he raised one hand to rub his forehead as his gaze slipped down to the smashed remains of a shelf surrounded by scattered books. "I can't do this anymore." She could sense the deep, abiding frustration and anger in his voice and couldn't help feeling a wash of guilt deep down in the pit of her stomach.

She knew her friend had been having a really rough time stuck on the ship since she activated the time dilation field two years ago, at first it had manifested itself as him running endlessly through the empty corridors of the ship, but it would build occasionally to him snapping at her when they talked about the progress of her research. He'd always apologise and she could understand how he felt, he was a man of action and he felt useless right now. He'd come up with ideas and plans to try to get out of their predicament, but when it came to actually doing the research to make it happen it just wasn't a part of his skillset, no matter how smart he was, and he _was_ smart, the Air Force didn't give you silver oak leaves unless you had brains.

"I just need some more time, Cam. I'll-" She stopped at the look he gave her, his head tilted to the side, his hand which had been at his forehead brushed back into his hair to clench at his head, and his eyes filled with a deep sadness.

"No, Sam. I can't do _this_!" he snapped, his hands moving between himself and her, indicating the space between them. "Two years, Sam, of running my ass off every morning and flailing a stick ineffectually at the T every night just to try and keep from..." He stopped, his gaze faltering, flicking from her face down to the floor and back. She stepped forward again in hopes of reaching out a hand to comfort him, but stopped when he once more backed up a step. "I can't do this for two more years and then two more after that. Looking at you every day and telling myself it's not right to tell you." She stepped forward again only for him to back up once more until his back hit the outer bulkhead. The cold metal against his back just seemed to make him deflate, he pressed his head back against the wall and slid down it, one knee up with his elbow resting on top of it, his other arm taking his weight as he leaned to the side.

Her heart was pounding in her chest. She'd never seen him like this, it was so unlike him. He was so quick to smile and laugh and to make those around him do the same that it shocked her to see how utterly broken he looked at that moment. Ever since meeting him at the Air Force Academy nearly two decades before she could always count on him being the boisterous one. The guy with the stories everyone groaned at, but listened to anyway 'cause they were so funny. He was the one who always dragged her away from her self-imposed research binges at the Academy and he picked right up where he left off after he arrived at the SGC and she returned to SG-1. She never could say no to him when he flashed that grin and sparkled those baby blues at her. Now he just seemed lost and she just wanted to wrap him in her arms and tell him they'd get through it like they always did. His words were confusing her though, and he seemed to be trying to keep her at bay.

"Cam, it's going to be alright." She stepped forward again, gingerly making her way over the debris in the middle of the floor, but she froze when he gazed up at her and pierced her with the most intense look.

"I love you, Sam. I've always loved you." His voice was husky, nearly broken and it just froze the blood in her veins to ice. Her spine stiffened and her hands clenched tight even as she was reaching for him and when his eyes flicked away from her and he looked down at his hand with a rueful smile on his lips she knew her face must have been a real sight. She couldn't even think, her backpedaling feet caused the slats of his destroyed bunk to slide under the soles of her boots and she nearly stumbled as she spun around and headed for the door, only her hand slamming against the panel to open it kept her upright on knees now turning to jelly, and she slipped between the hissing doors as soon as there was space for her. She turned up the corridor and ran.

* * *

Atlantis, March 2008

Her eyes flew open to instantly focus on the light fixture above her bed in Atlantis. When she could move, her hands flew to scrub her eyes and run through her sleep-tousled hair as she tried to push her head back into the pillow with a groan. What the Hell was that dream about? Cam confessing to her on Odyssey while inside the time dilation field? Ridiculous. Why was she fantasizing about Cam again after all these years? There was no way he'd feel that way about her.

They'd known each other since her first day at the Academy when he was assigned to show her squad of cadets around the campus. She wasn't going to deny that she, like just about every other female cadet, had fallen for those eyes and that drawl within five minutes of him assembling them together and introducing himself. And he was funny too, but he'd kept the straightest, most serious face imaginable, even shooting them all with glares after making the whole squad laugh. It wasn't until she saw him off duty, laughing and joking and grinning like an idiot that she realised it wasn't unintentional.

The Air Force paid for her Ph.D. in Astrophysics at MIT, while she'd come to Colorado Springs to do her BCT over the summers. This allowed her to take an accelerated course through the Academy which concentrated on the military training and courses. In the end, he had been set to graduate a year ahead of her despite her being older, but he had always been available to make sure she wasn't taking herself too seriously which she'd had an awful problem with at university. He could talk her ear off for hours about nothing and make it interesting, he'd drag her and other squaddies to the movies, to the bars, to the wilds around Colorado Springs to go hiking. He'd even taken them to a museum once. That was just the way he was. He kept them all sane. And she'd loved him for it, all the while knowing he'd never be more than a friend.

Throwing the sheet covering her aside and kicking her legs out from the bed she padded over to the balcony to stand outside and look out over the ocean. The early dawn breeze cooled the flushing skin on her cheeks and neck, causing her to shiver slightly. It hadn't felt like a dream though. It didn't have the quality of a dream, the unreality, the detachment. It had been too real. That mission on Odyssey was a constant burr under her saddle. An itch she couldn't scratch. The worst of it was Teal'c knew everything! Well, at least everything he'd experienced personally during the fifty-odd years they'd spent staring at an Ori energy beam outside their starboard viewports. They'd lived a lifetime together on that ship. Was it possible something had happened? She looked up at the sky, orienting herself to the increasingly familiar constellations in the starscape above Atlantis. One of the first things she'd done after taking over command of the Alteran city was to ask Dr. Zelenka where the Milky Way was in the sky. She'd never have asked Rodney to tell her, that was for sure. She found the small group of stars he'd told her to use as her anchor point and followed a line down to where he'd told her their home galaxy was. The worst thing about the dream was she didn't know why she'd run away.

* * *

Stargate Command, September 2009

Colonel Samantha Carter smoothed out the skirt of her dress blues as she rode the elevator down the sublevels below NORAD under Cheyenne Mountain. She considered herself lucky to be back in Colorado after extensive debriefings in Washington having grown to dislike D.C. immensely. Her last mission had not gone well to say the least. The doors of the elevator opened on sublevel 25 and she stepped out to the beaming smile of Colonel Cameron Mitchell who wasted no time in wrapping an arm around her and embracing her. She finally felt like she was home now.

"Welcome back, Sam. The rest of the guys are waiting for us in the mess, do you want to go now or get out of the monkey suit first?" He fell into step alongside her as their hug broke up and she started walking from the elevator. She looked down at her dress blues and then at his own blue BDUs and smiled.

"I think I'll change first, Cam, Vala isn't the most careful of eaters when she's excited." She smiled as he chuckled and they easily wended their way through the corridors to the quarters she kept on base. They talked about the little goings on at the base while she had been seconded to command of the USS George Hammond on a mission to Icarus Base on P4X-351. The vessel was the latest BC-304 built and had still not been assigned a permanent commander. She'd been made official escort for the party of Senator Alan Armstrong, visiting the base on an oversight mission. Changing quickly while Cam waited outside, the two military leaders of SG-1 then made their way to the mess up on sublevel 22 to meet up with the rest of the team.

"How bad was it, Sam?" Dr. Daniel Jackson pushed a tall sundae glass of blue jello towards a very grateful Sam as she sat across from him and next to the Jaffa warrior, Teal'c. Cam slid in next to her and across from Vala Mal Doran, who was licking a spoonful of chocolate ice cream.

"Well, the planet isn't there anymore so you could say it was really bad." Sam smiled ruefully at her friend as she picked up the spoon and began to dig into her jello. Daniel winced and gave her a sympathetic look. "Since I also failed to bring back the Senator, the President himself had to put in a word for me with the oversight committee." Cameron blew out an exasperated breath and rubbed a hand through his hair in frustration.

"I can't believe they even tried to hold you responsible for that, Sam. It's ridiculous." He was clearly upset that the politicos in Washington were trying to hound his best friend who just happened to have saved the entire galaxy on more than one occasion.

"You did everything you could to buy time for the evacuation, and those that didn't get beamed up by you or died in the attack went through the 'gate to Destiny." offered Vala as she brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and scooped up some more ice cream for herself.

"Where they're now stranded. The Senator died as well." Sam retorted with a sigh.

"Sacrificing himself to save the others. Senator Armstrong should be honoured as a hero, Colonel Carter." Teal'c inclined his head as he spoke offering his own support to his friend, Sam gave him a small grateful smile.

"I know, Teal'c, but I-" she was cut off by Cameron's hand over hers on the table.

"Don't start second guessing yourself on this one, Sam. It went down the only way it could have gone down. Now we just live with it and try to figure out a way to bring those people home." He gave her hand a squeeze and she leaned against his shoulder for a bit. "Which is what we're going to start doing with tomorrow's mission, we're scouting for new planets with similar conditions to P4X-351 to provide the necessary power to allow us to dial Destiny again. If we can do that much we can send them supplies at least."

"If it's ready access to geothermal power then planets with Lucian Alliance outposts are a good bet, they like tapping into them for energy." Vala offered, twirling her spoon in her hand now that she'd finished her ice cream.

"They do favour such arrangements as it is easier to hide their bases from orbital scans. Icarus base was a former Lucian Alliance mining outpost after all." Teal'c elaborated on Vala's point and Cameron nodded.

"So taking another base from them saves us the trouble of having to build one." added Daniel.

"That makes it more likely that they'll attack the base to try to retake it, that's likely the reason Icarus was attacked this time around." came Sam's rebuttal as she ate some of her jello. The rest fell quiet for a moment.

"Which is why our first choice would be an uninhabited planet which we could claim for ourselves." Cam stated the position that General Landry informed him was the considered opinion of the brass and the IOA. "If it proves too tough to find one or too expensive to build our own base then the likelihood of us trying to capture another Lucian Alliance outpost gets higher."

"Will we widen the search to include planets without a Stargate, Colonel Mitchell?" asked Teal'c from the end of the table.

"That would require the main focus of the search to be carried out by our ships, T, and we don't have that many to spare, though I hear that will be the first mission of the Hammond once it's all Bristol fashion. The Tok'ra offered to help out with a list of likely choices as well." replied Cameron. "We're going to be scouting addresses from the Ancient database to try to narrow that list down to a few we might want to do orbital scans of. So first choice would be a planet with a 'gate we can move to the base. Second choice would be a 'gateless planet we can transplant a Stargate to."

"The problem with scouting through the 'gate is that most planets we visit tend to have the 'gate well away from the mountainous regions. All we can look for from the ground are basic indicators of tectonic activity, geological stability and radioactivity levels." Daniel pointed out to a nod from Cameron.

"I know, Jackson," confirmed SG-1's leader, "but the faster we tag planets as potentially uninhabited, the faster we can get ships to them for orbital scans of the core radioactivity rates. The more radioactive reactions there are the more heat the core will be generating for us to tap in to."

"The vast majority of inhabited planets with a Stargate have all of their civilisation tucked in within twenty miles of the 'gate." added Sam. "There are still hundreds of addresses in the Ancient database list that we haven't even sent a MALP to, let alone put boots on the ground."

"Briefing at 0800 tomorrow for our first planet on the list." Cam brought their little discussion to a close and the topics shifted as he got up to grab them all more drinks. Sam watched him walk away and noticed he was stopped by an airman who handed him a parcel.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Chapter 2**

Prince Sultan AB, Saudi Arabia, December 2002

He knocked on the door of his squadron CO's office and waited until the full bird Colonel inside told him to come in. He opened the door and immediately spotted the General sitting in the chair facing his CO's desk, both men were now looking at him as he walked in and came to full attention.

"Lt. Colonel Mitchell reporting as ordered, sir." He stood rock still, his gaze focused on a point on the wall behind the right shoulder of the grey haired, stocky colonel seated behind the large desk overflowing with papers and folders in neat piles. The view outside the window showed the almost painfully blue sky above the Saudi Arabian desert base at which he was currently stationed. Despite not moving his eyes a millimeter from that spot on the wall he could feel the General seated to his left eyeing him carefully, appraising him.

"At ease, Colonel." his CO said and he opened his stance and clasped his hands behind his back, allowing his eyes to meet those of his superior. The older man glanced at the brigadier general seated across from him and made introductions. The General stood up and held out his hand which Mitchell immediately shook. "He's come to offer you a job, Mitchell."

"We're creating a new squadron, son, based in Nevada, flying the latest hardware. You've been tipped to lead it." The General's clipped tones didn't really inspire Mitchell, he was already flying the latest F-16Cs in the 363rd AEW 79th FS and there was no way the F-22 was coming out any time soon, and taking a Stateside posting when things were really heating up in the Middle East and he was in a front line squadron seemed more like a demotion. He said as much to the two flag officers, as politely as possible. "Oh, this _is_ a front line squadron, Colonel, make no mistake about that. Guaranteeing liberty from very real threats. I was told this might be an inducement." The General reached into the trouser pocket of his dress blues and handed Cameron a yellow post-it note. His brow furrowed in confusion then a lop-sided smile flitted across his lips as he looked down at the incongruous piece of paper he'd just been handed. It read only, 'Take the job Cam.'

"This is Major Samantha Carter's handwriting, sir." He glanced at the General's stern brown eyes with an incredulous look. The older man only nodded.

"Major Carter recommended you, son, her input is highly valued." Once more the older man's eyes settled into appraising Cam as he looked down again at the note. A slow smile spread across his face as things started to fall into place in his head.

"Deep Space Radar Telemetry my ass." He was openly grinning now while his CO looked, with evident confusion, at the General, who seemed very pleased. Cam had known for a while that Sam had been up to something other than what she was actually officially listed as doing. Something he'd never been able to get any clue about. He'd never seen the walls go up faster the few times he'd tried. If this got him a step closer to her then there was not really any question of his taking the chance. "Where do I sign up, sir?"

* * *

Groom Lake, Nevada, January 2003

Sam paused outside the internal door to the hangar connecting it to the rest of the facility and nervously clenched and unclenched her fingers and smoothed down the knee length skirt of her dress blues. It had been a few years since she'd last seen him at that function in D.C. after she'd been promoted to Major, although they'd kept in touch by phone and emails. She'd hated lying to him so much that night, she hadn't realised how much she had just wanted to tell him everything as soon as she saw him. She'd introduced him to Jack and Daniel and they'd caught up over the next hour or three, he'd told her so many stories, each one better than the last, and she so longed to share some of hers it had been physically painful. Still, she couldn't drag herself away from him, seeing him had been so good.

She looked through the square safety glass window in the door and saw him wearing his own dress blues, holding his cover in the crook of his arm and running a hand over the wing of the X-302 prototype laid up on some jacks in the center of the hangar. She should not be this nervous, damn it! He was one of her best friends and now he knew everything she'd been doing. She didn't have to lie any more. Oh. Maybe he'd be angry with her for the lies. She took a deep breath and set a smile on her face. She'd just have to get through it if he were and hope he'd understand. She opened the door and walked slowly towards him, the sound of the engineers tinkering and tooling underneath the sleek, forward swept wings of the Terran space superiority fighter masked her approach, but he seemed so absorbed in memorising the lines of the craft he might not have noticed her even if the hangar had been completely silent.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" she asked as she came to a stop not more than six feet from him. He spun at the sound of her voice and the grin which took over his features dispelled all thoughts she'd had of his being angry with her. Even more surprising was when he ran to her and wrapped his arms around her waist in a bear hug and lifted her off the ground unceremoniously.

"Deep Space Radar Telemetry my ass!" He laughed as he spun her around and she had to wrap her arms around his neck to keep her balance and gave a little yelp as he bounced up and down before setting her down again. "Major Samantha Carter, you sly minx!" Now she was grinning as he settled for a more ordinary hug, which was still a bit informal for an Air Force facility.

"It's really good seeing you again, Cam- sorry... Lt. Colonel Mitchell, sir!" She gave a little salute despite being indoors and he grinned at her then fingered the gold oak leaf on one of her shoulders.

"Won't be long now, Sam, especially if even a third of what I hear you get up to is true." His grin was like cool water on a hot day and she couldn't help blushing sheepishly at the pride in his voice as she looked down at the ground to try to recover slightly. He could still make her feel like the crushing cadet she'd been at the Academy. "I've read a bunch of your mission reports, at least the few I have clearance for now, and I'm still having trouble believing any of it at all!" She noted the tinge of awe in his voice and she felt even more embarrassed. "You'll have to tell me your stories now, Sam," she nodded at him before he turned towards the spaceship behind him, "and I can't wait to get this baby up in the air! Thanks for recommending me for this gig, Sam, this is..." He shook his head in disbelief. "I know Bryce could fly one of these in his sleep. You sure I'm good enough for this?" He looked at her expectantly, but there was a glint in his eye that told her he felt himself to be good enough, he just wanted to hear her belief in him.

"I do, Cam, you're the best pilot I've ever flown with. I have no doubt you'll get everything and more out of the 302s." She smiled at him and couldn't keep herself from slipping her arm through his as he stared at the open cockpit ahead of them. She turned a bit more sombre at the reminder of Bryce Ferguson who had also been short listed to join the squadron before the incident which had landed him in the hospital. "How is Colonel Ferguson, Cameron?" She saw the dark cloud come over Cameron's eyes as his smile faltered slightly.

"Still undergoing physical therapy, but he's looking a lot better. The doctors say he still has a sliver of shrapnel which concerns them," he was pointing at his head with a waggling finger, indicating the location, "they won't let him fly again." This news brought Sam up short, she hadn't heard their friend had been grounded.

"It wasn't your fault, Cam." she breathed and he simply turned to look at her with a face indicating he believed it was his fault and nothing she could say would change his mind about it. He just looked away after a while and changed the subject, she sighed and let him.

"This one's a two-seater variant, I see. Tell me you'll let me take you up soon." He looked at her and grinned at her emphatic nod. "Haha, I can't wait! I'm gonna make you regret agreeing to that!" He leered at her evilly and she chuckled at his enthusiasm despite knowing he was trying to hide his guilt and anger at himself. Even so she was sure that he'd never be able to make her regret agreeing to anything he proposed.

"Just as soon as I wrap up this media tour of the Prometheus I have to do." She smiled at his grin as she accepted, but when the words 'media tour' registered his brow furrowed in confusion. "I know, I know. It can't be helped though. It's the only way to stop this journalist, Donovan, from going to the foreign press with what little she knows. We're not going to let any footage actually get out. We have a plan, it will be a cakewalk." She grinned and he nodded.

"So this will be a few hours of drudgery for you and then I get you and this baby all to myself, right?" He raised his eyebrows enquiringly and she nodded smiling. "Great!"

An hour later Cam was standing in the base's control room watching the Prometheus speeding off into orbit after being hijacked.

"Aw Hell! Those bastards are stealin' Sam!" This outburst earned him odd looks from the techs and officers standing around him.

* * *

Seattle, Washington, August 2008 (alternate timeline)

Sam sat at her brand-new table, in her brand-new kitchen, wearing her brand-new bathrobe, drinking coffee from her brand-new mug and eating English muffins from her brand-new plates. She hated it. She read the headlines in the issue of the New York Times she'd just laid down flat on the table and closed her eyes when she realised that they were probably very similar to the headlines that would have shown on the front page in her timeline. She opened the paper straight to the classified ads and started scanning them. There! She grabbed her pen and quickly circled the wanted ad in the automotive section which was looking for a 1967 Ford Mustang S-Code Fastback in black, and looked at the phone number listed next to it. It would be to a disposable mobile, as they'd agreed, and she reached into her brand-new hand bag and fished out the disposable phone she'd also bought. Typing in the number she waited impatiently for it to connect, heard it ring once, twice, then an instantly familiar Southern drawl on the other end made her grin like a schoolgirl.

"Hello?" Cam prompted, she detected a note of expectancy in the voice.

"Cam, it's me." she replied breathlessly.

"Sam?" The joy in his voice was easily recognisable. "It's so good to hear your voice, darlin', you have no idea!"

"You too, Cam, I know it's only been a couple of weeks since they split us up, but..." She had to stop as an inexplicable tightness filled her throat and her eyes were stinging.

"Say no more!" he interjected. "I feel the same. Listen, let's get the business out of the way, then we can talk some more." She found herself nodding even knowing that he couldn't see her. They quickly exchanged addresses and cover names, even though they'd probably never use them. What they would use were mail drops and P.O. boxes, as well as disposable phones. Cam told her about Daniel's request for passport photos and cash from the both of them which she found curious, but made a note of it as well as the contact details Cam had received from him. She'd call her friend tonight, it looked like the Air Force had put him up in Boston, while Cam was in the outskirts of Austin. After they got all of that sorted out she found herself smiling happily just listening to Cam chuckle on the other end of the line. "Wanna know a good thing about that ad I put up?" he asked and she told him to go on. "I've actually received a few calls from folks looking to sell their Mustangs. I think I'll just take one of them up on the offer. This one guy has one up quite cheap. It just needs some restoration work which I can do myself. I miss my 'Stang like you wouldn't believe, Sam." She grinned.

"You know, maybe you should set yourself up to restore classic cars for a living. You loved working on your car after all, and the Air Force has already made commitments to us to help us get our own businesses off the ground. I'm sure they think if they do that we'd be less likely to try to rewrite history." She felt the intensity of Cam's silence on the other end as he gave her suggestion a lot of thought.

"I think you're on to something. It would make a good cover for travel too." he declared and proceeded to list more benefits to her idea. She smiled happily and carried on chatting with him well into the morning, bouncing ideas off him for a business for herself. Something which could help them with their plans. She'd discuss it with Daniel too, later that evening. After she bid him a fond goodbye she put the phone back into her bag and tidied up the table, which was now covered in slips of paper with notes she'd taken during the conversation. She sighed happily, unable to quite believe how much better she felt now that she'd gotten back in contact with her teammate.

* * *

Stargate Command, September 2009

Cam dismissed the solicitous airman with a nod before looking down at the parcel and turning it over. Seeing his parents' address he opened it, wondering what they were sending him. Inside he found a note from his mother detailing how she'd found a box under the stairs with his name on it, which contained a thick, sealed Manila envelope addressed to him and several cassette tapes, which she'd included. The sealed letter was curious, it was old, but he was sure he recognised the handwriting on the direction. The cassette tapes were all sealed in their boxes with adhesive tape and marked confidential. The envelope also had one more distinctive feature, scrawled across the front of it in bold letters was the directive to not open it until August 2008. He tried to remind himself what had been happening a year previous while opening the envelope with a finger and pulling out a smaller envelope marked 'Eyes Only Col. Cam Mitchell' in red marker, which seemed to contain another tape and something hard and circular, and another letter addressed to 'Generals Landry and O'Neill, members SG-1' which caused Cam's eyes to bug out. The one mentioning his rank wasn't that surprising, he just stuffed that envelope into his BDUs' pocket to open later, but for his parents to find something at their house, addressed to the Generals and mentioning SG-1 by name was almost unbelievable. He looked up to find Sam looking at him curiously and he motioned her over with a flick of his head. She got up and the other members of his team looked over as he started walking to meet Sam halfway.

"What is it, Cameron?" she asked, seeing the look on his face and taking the parcel with the sealed tapes he offered her, which she glanced at in mounting curiosity.

"Did General O'Neill come back with you from Washington?" Cam asked her in an edgy tone, she nodded.

"He was at the debriefings with me, he personally hand-delivered the letter the President wrote for the committee." She motioned her head in the vague direction of General Landry's office despite it being a few floors down from the commissary. "He should be meeting with General Landry now." The rest of the team noticing the tension which had arisen in the two colonels got up and walked over as well.

"We should go see them now," Mitchell stated holding up the letter addressed to them, "my parents found this at their farmhouse." Shocked expressions greeted him which he took in for a moment before turning around and leading them to the elevator to go down to sublevel 27.

He knocked on the open door of General Landry's office and both he and Sam stood at attention in front of the two generals until given an implied 'at ease' when Landry asked them what they wanted.

"Sir, I received a very unusual parcel from my parents today, they say they found a box at their place with my name on it and inside were a bunch of sealed tapes and this letter." He handed the letter to Landry, without mentioning the other letter which was meant only for himself. Landry glanced at the direction and looked back up at Cameron, the surprise evident in his two raised eyebrows, he handed the letter to O'Neill who scowled at it.

"What's the meaning of this, Mitchell?" asked Landry rather pointedly.

"I don't know, sir, I came here as soon as I saw what was written on it." He was trying not to sound defensive as it was a valid question. This could be a huge security breach. He trusted his parents not to mess around with anything which was clearly marked as his, after all his father was ex-military and used to the trappings of secrecy. His mother's letter mentioned the box was marked 'Classified' which immediately set off alarm bells with his father. O'Neill opened the letter and scowled even harder, looking at Cam incredulously.

"This is dated '1970', Mitchell, and signed by you." Jack declared which brought confusion to everyone in the room, Cam looked at the signature and it was indeed his, which he confirmed while still denying any knowledge of the letter itself. O'Neill read the letter and handed it to Landry who read it as well. "Where are the tapes?" he asked and was handed them by Sam.

"Walter, I need a cassette tape player in the briefing room immediately!" Landry shouted at the open door, causing the members of SG-1 to wince at the loudness. A squawk emanated from the intercom on his desk and the disembodied voice of Chief Harriman gave an acknowledgement of the order. Everyone filed out the other door to Landry's office into the Briefing room and seated themselves around it to wait for the base's senior non-com to bring up a tape deck he'd scrounged from that place Chief Master Sergeants find everything that's asked of them. Once he'd been dismissed Cam took out the tape marked as the first and put it into the tape deck to play. The voice they heard was unmistakably Cameron's voice, but it sounded older and weaker and the Southern drawl was more pronounced.

"This is Colonel Cameron Mitchell, US Air Force. After-action report, unnamed operation. Current date, May 19th, 1970. I will detail in this report the events which took place during and after the extraction ceremony performed on the clone of Ba'al by the Tok'ra on July 31st, 2008-" O'Neill stabbed at the stop button on the deck and looked around the table.

"_Clone_ of Ba'al? What the Hell?" He glared at Cam as if he expected answers and the younger Colonel looked very uncomfortable under the Lieutenant General's gaze.

"Let's listen to the tape some more before we jump down Mitchell's throat, Jack." said Landry pressing the play button once more. Cam glanced at the other members of his team whose features showed equal parts, confusion, curiosity, amusement and sympathy. The tape continued, detailing a plot by Ba'al to take control of the Goa'uld System Lords using knowledge of future events gained from time travel, and a scheme to keep Earth from using its Stargate by sinking it to the bottom of the Atlantic, high above the Arctic Circle, while it was in transit between Egypt and the US before World War II, and it turned out Cam, Sam and Daniel got their chance to glare at Jack after his meeting with them on the USS Alexandria was described.

"What?" O'Neill asked after Cam stopped the tape after a moment and the three of them looked at him pointedly.

"You were a bit of a jerk there, Jack." said Daniel with a critical look.

"Oh, come on, you'd be a jerk too if you were still a Colonel and found out your best friend is supposed to be a dweeb." Jack waved them off and Landry pressed the play button again. It carried on until Mitchell described jumping through the Stargate to Egypt in 1929 where that first tape ended. They had to take a break for a while at that point to collect themselves. The events described previously were just too harrowing for all concerned. When they returned half an hour later, Vala still looked pale and unfocused, but everyone else seemed better. Landry looked at each person silently before pressing play on the second tape.

"I still had ten years to wait for Ba'al to arrive." There was a nervous cough from the Mitchell on the tape. "I apologise for this Generals, but I spent the next decade as a sailor in the Merchant Marine until I could sign on with the Achilles-" O'Neill stabbed at the stop button angrily and stared at Cameron with fire in his eyes, Landry's own gaze was much more dispassionate, but no less disappointed. Sam just shook her head at him.

"How could you, Cam?" she asked as Daniel just covered his face with both hands to try and keep himself from laughing, Teal'c's stoicism was marred by the mirth in his eyes while Vala was still uncharacteristically withdrawn. Cam hung his head without meeting the gaze of any of the Air Force officers.

"I'm... ashamed." he said plaintively and Daniel couldn't keep from sniggering.

"We'll think up a suitable punishment for this transgression later." Landry said pressing play again. When the tape resumed Mitchell described how he and another crewman aboard the Achilles shot Ba'al and the Jaffa as they came through the Stargate. He went on to detail how he'd dropped the bodies and Goa'uld technology into the ocean, and tried to live a very boring life from then on to keep from contaminating the timeline as much as possible. He went on to explain the audio nature of the report as a proof of his identity and how he trusted in the safety of these materials at his parents house.

"So you think you're a big damn hero now, huh, Mitchell?" O'Neill asked, some amusement creeping into his voice. "Shot ol' Ba'al in the head and saved the world from a Goa'uld invasion by giving me another time-travel headache."

"You've scored the SG-1 trifecta now, Cam." Sam was smiling at him alluding to a conversation they'd had two years before when they'd been shifted into an alternate dimension by Merlin's device. He smiled ruefully at her.

"Let's get some voice print analysis done on these tapes, Carter." Landry ordered and stood up, Cam and Sam followed suit.

"Yes, sir." she confirmed.

"I'll have Walter get these tapes for transcription, looks like one of them is about the political situation in that alternate timeline." Landry picked up one of the tapes.

"The Navy in charge of the Stargate program is just all sorts of wrong." Jack grimaced.

"Agreed. Able Seaman Mitchell, report to the brig, consider yourself under arrest for desertion." Landry said with amusement evident in his tone and smile. "Dismissed."

"Yes, sir." Cam gave his CO a small smile in acknowledgement as O'Neill and Landry walked out of the briefing room with the tapes and the deck.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Chapter 3**

Stargate Command, January 2006

Cam leant against the entrance to one of the science labs staring at a sight which most men would consider their ultimate fantasy. The woman he loved times sixteen. It did nothing for him though. He only loved one of them, and his eyes could always spot which one she was. It was true there were slight variations between most of these Carters, and he had to admit that the one by the coffee machine was _really_ rocking those glasses and he made a mental note to ask his Sam about the Hot Librarian look. Three of them were dressed exactly like her yet he still knew which one she was. His eyes just latched on to her automatically. He didn't think too much about the reasons why. Right now his eyes were seeing his Sam talking with the Tok'ra, Martouf, who came through with Dr. Janet Fraiser's SG-1 team. Not a sight he was liking at all. He needed to find something to do. He was getting antsy, and when he got antsy he needed to work up a sweat. And knowing himself as he did, he was pretty sure he knew where he'd find willing cohorts. He spun about and walked down the hall to one of the guest rooms housing the other teams and nodded to the SF standing outside, who nodded back and let him pass. Opening the door and sticking his head in, he noted the first ersatz SG-1 team that came through the wormhole dressed in their black BDUs, minus their Carter of course, and he got the other Mitchell's attention.

"Up for some hoops, Mitchell?" he asked, seeing a look of mild surprise followed by ready understanding come over the face of his doppleganger.

"Yeah, if you can swing it," was the reply, "better'n just waiting here for the Carters, love 'em to death an' all, and don't get me wrong, I know they'll figure it out, just..."

"You're gettin' antsy." he finished for his other self, who just nodded. "I'll arrange something, some SFs will be by to bring you to the gym in a while." The Teal'c who had been standing by the far wall just raised an eyebrow at the two Mitchells.

"Are you planning to organise an interdimensional basketball tournament, Colonel Mitchell?" asked the Jaffa. The Daniel who was seated at the table opposite the other Mitchell raised both eyebrows at the thought.

"As interesting as that might be, T-man, I was actually thinkin' about a Mitchell vs Mitchell five-on-five." A slow grin spread across the other Mitchell's face at the thought. "We'll pick teams an' everythin', it'll be great, the rest of you can be the crowd." Daniel and Teal'c looked at each other and at their Mitchell before the Jaffa bowed lightly to Cam to indicate his assent. "Great! Gimme a little bit and we'll get this show on the road." Cam slapped the inside of the door after finishing and ducked his head back out to go have a quick word with the Boss.

It took a bit of work, but Landry eventually approved, and with a small contingent of SFs present alongside the other-dimensional SG teams, the small gym was soon filled to capacity. His Daniel and Teal'c were seated in the front row, surrounded by a very diverse yet eerily similar crowd.

"This is the craziest thing I've ever heard of." declared Daniel as he watched the dozen Mitchells divide themselves into two teams and start warming up.

"It is indeed a unique occurrence, Daniel Jackson. One which I am very much looking forward to." replied the Jaffa beside him. Janet Fraiser showed up at the door to the gym and Daniel caught her eye, indicating the seat next to him which she took.

"I really can't quite comprehend what I'm looking at." she observed. Ahead of them two groups of Mitchells huddled together for final preparations before the toss-up.

"Alright, we're gonna have to sort ourselves out for names so we don't get confused. Since this is my home turf I'll just pick 'em for you." Cam looked around at the five pairs of nearly, but not quite, identical blue eyes, whose owners just nodded their consent. "I'm Shaft Prime, you're Cyborg Shaft," he indicated the one whose medical scan showed a metal plate in his head then pointed at the Mitchell who was clearly younger than the rest by several years, "Shaftboy-"

"So we're going with a Superman naming scheme?" interrupted the Mitchell to Cam's left, the one who would be last to get a name as he had started going from his right. Cam just nodded before continuing.

"Cam-El," he indicated the one Mitchell whose callsign wasn't 'Shaft' before moving on, "Last Shaft of Krypton, and lastly, Bizarro Shaft." All the Mitchells save the recipient chuckled as he named the man on his left, who glared at them.

"Why do I get to be Bizarro?" he asked with a look of ill-humour.

"'Cause you're like the anti-me, man!" cried Cam. "You grew up in Nebraska, you're a Marine aviator, and you're dating Vala! You're a goatee away from being from the mirror universe!" The others were nodding as he listed all these faults to the last Mitchell's growing consternation.

"Grandma's macaroons?" asked Shaftboy.

"Hate 'em." replied Bizarro.

"See!" cried Cam. "Who the Hell are you?" He was grinning and slapped the marine on the shoulder before setting up some position assignments and some plays for them to call and told Shaftboy he was taking first shift as the sub. Once it was all sorted they bumped fists and broke up to walk over to the center to meet with the other team, Cam stepped forward slightly to talk to the first team's Mitchell whom he'd made the other team's captain by dint of seniority. He quickly indicated the names he'd given his teammates for fairness' sake and wasn't disappointed that his counterpart had also given his teammates names.

"Yeah, we did the same, just with Spider-man." He started with himself before indicating the sub at the sideline and continuing up the line of Mitchells back up towards himself. "I'm Spidey, he's Amazing, Spectacular, Ultimate, 2099."

"Hah! 2099, I really liked that one." Cam grinned and the other smiled slowly before pointing out his last team member beside him, the real stand-out.

"And of course, MJ." He indicated the only female Cameron Mitchell that had come through the 'gate. "We're all set whenever you're ready." Cam was about to say they were when he heard a voice from the crowd.

"You know, Cam looks really good as a woman." Twelve heads spun as one to lock eyes on Daniel, his Daniel, and the growing space between the linguist, Teal'c and Janet to either side of him, who obviously wanted no part of that last comment. Almost as one, the eleven male Mitchells crossed their arms and stood in a line in front of of the startled archaeologist.

"Jackson! You're not thinking ungentlemanly thoughts about the lady Cameron are ya?" Cam glowered at him. "We might have something to say about that." He flitted his index finger along the line of Mitchells just as the female Cameron started laughing behind them.

"Don't worry, Cams, I can take care of myself." She was definitely amused at having unexpectedly gained eleven very protective brothers. "Besides," she began looking at Daniel with a raised eyebrow and a huge grin and turned to face him with her hands on her hips. "Danielle would kick my ass if I ever looked at a man." There was a roar from the other Mitchells which was dwarfed by the laughter from the rest of the crowd. Daniel looked between Janet, who was in hysterics, and Teal'c, who had a visible smirk plastered over his usually stoic features. The female Cam Mitchell waved and smiled to her archaeologist girlfriend in the crowd.

In short order the game started and it took triple overtime to decide the outcome, much to everyone's enjoyment. Master Sergeant Siler had set up a video camera for posterity, and because there would be a bit of a black market for the recordings. Each ersatz SG-1 team also got a copy when they were returned to their own universes. Many months later, Cam would screen the game for the team after Vala rejoined them as she had begged to see it, Sam herself hadn't been present at the game either. She definitely enjoyed the sight of so many Mitchells sweating so profusely in some very shapely sweatpants and tight shirts. Vala even made a discrete comment to Sam about the female Mitchell as the guys were very intent on watching the game.

"She is so very pretty." she whispered while leaning towards Sam without taking her eyes off the television. Sam nodded.

"I'd go gay for Cameron." she said very softly and shared a laugh with the brunette over the joke.

* * *

Jack O'Neill's cabin, Minnesota, September 2008 (alternate timeline)

Cameron killed the engine of his rented four-by-four and stepped out into the darkening sky to find Sam and Daniel hovering by the door on the front porch of the cabin, he could see a fire going inside and could smell something cooking as he reached into the back of the truck to get his duffel bag and the box of groceries he'd brought to their little illicit reunion slash camping trip.

"Hey, Daniel," he called, "bet those undercover feebs never figured a discredited academic with one leg would be able to lose 'em." Daniel smiled at that and lent heavily on a walking stick as he held the door open for his friend.

"They must not have believed me when I told them I've been trained by the special forces." Daniel shrugged innocently and Cam laughed.

"Really good to see you, Sam." He smiled at her warmly and Sam couldn't help herself, coming over and giving him a hug as he held the box against his hip with one arm. He grinned when she kissed his cheek.

"Really good to see you too, Cam." she replied taking the box from him and heading inside. Cam put a hand on Daniel's shoulder and paused for a moment to show his relief at seeing him. Daniel nodded in return and both men walked inside. "Good thing we didn't tell them about the transponders in our arms or we'd never be able to meet up. Typically predictable reaction, they really shouldn't have left us alone on that sub for so long if they didn't want us to conspire together."

"The part that nearly made me snap was that ass on the bus telling me they'd arrest me if I tried to make contact with 'Mr. Jackson or Ms. Carter,'" said Cam making air quotes with his fingers, "as if doctorates and ranks earned in an alternate timeline didn't mean anything." There was a silent beat before all three of them broke out into laughter simultaneously at the absurdity of it all.

"Did either of you have trouble with your handlers?" Sam asked from the small kitchen. "Mine thinks I'm still at home. Built myself my own Chimera system and rigged the house with computer control. Let's just say I'm going to be repainting one of the upstairs rooms for a couple of days. Also tagged her car with a passive transponder so _I_ know where _she_ is at all times." Daniel and Cameron were staring at her mouths agape.

"Uh, I told mine I was going camping in Wyoming." Cam supplied as he saw the teasing smile on Sam's face. He lay his duffel on one of the chairs at the table and sat down in another.

"I told mine I was going to be visiting several Native American burial grounds in New England, no specific itinerary." Daniel mentioned, sitting down on the couch by the fire and propping the cane at the side, scratching at his knee through the fabric of his trousers, just above the top of his prosthetic leg. "Any chance we can get our own holoprojector systems? It would be best to avoid more coincidences such as both Cam and I going on trips at the same time." Sam beamed at them as she walked in from the kitchen with a tray of drinks.

"Yep! I made you each one, I'll show you how to use them tomorrow. I've also got lists of the sort of equipment you'll need to set up your own places for computer control. All off-the-shelf stuff." She sat down next to Daniel on the couch and patted his knee after having distributed drinks.

"Do you think Gen- Colonel O'Neill would mind us using his place for this, if he knew?" asked Cam from his seat at the table. A dark look came over Sam and Daniel on the couch, they definitely felt a little betrayed by the Jack O'Neill in this timeline. Using his cabin for their rendezvous seemed like a little bit of payback for his brush off of them.

"Don't really care what he thinks actually." Sam muttered and Daniel looked at her with a slight look of surprise. He hadn't been expecting quite that much resentment. "We'll draw up a list of alternatives for our next meetup." Both men nodded at her.

They then proceeded to hash out possible plans for attempting to deal with their situation. First they all agreed they had to keep pressing their handlers to allow them to officially contact each other. It was maddening to each of them to be living in a world so drastically different from their own and not to have the solace of each others' company at least. Stealing two days every month or so was a joke. They also agreed their first course of action should be to try to contact the Asgard, to see if they were still around, although the chances of that might be slim as they had had no help from Earth with the Replicators in this timeline and who knew what sort of progress they'd made with their own genetic research. If the Asgard were still around then perhaps they could help them find Ba'al's temporal device, whatever it was. If they couldn't contact the Asgard then maybe the Tollan were still around, Ba'al would have needed a plan to deal with Anubis after all. Sam was designing a subspace communicator system from memory and trying to think up engineering solutions for replacing what they had used Asgard tech for in their timeline to strictly using Earth tech which wasn't overtly hard to get. Cam offered some suggestions for ideas which left Sam a little stunned, not thinking he had any knowledge of Asgard technology at all, when she asked about it he simply shrugged, saying it sounded right in his head. Daniel proposed that Sam should split up the materials list between them as it would be too suspicious for her to buy it all herself. The irony of using their government stipend to get around their non-interference orders were not lost on any of them.

Sam had set herself up with a home theatre/automation installation business so buying a lot of technical doohickeys would be easy for her. Cam had opened a classic car restoration and customisation business, and that gave him access to raw materials they could use as he was in the market for sheet metal work. Daniel had been the revelation though. As an archaeologist he had a fairly good idea of who the fences were for stolen antiquities, and such people knew people who knew people who heard that putting a little cash in certain places caused envelopes with certain documentation to replace said cash after a while. They each had an identity with a corresponding set of IDs and passports and bank accounts of which their government handlers were completely unaware of. If push came to shove they could all get out of the country within a day and have ready access to cash.

Their stomachs sated, their heads filled with plans and their hearts full of conviction they found themselves breaking up for the night sometime around three in the morning. A restless Cam found himself staring out over the lake, devoid of fish. He heard soft footsteps behind him along the wooden planks and turned slightly to see Sam sidle up to him, rubbing her arms at the chill night air.

"It gets cold early in the year here, Cam, especially at night." The moonlight caressed the outlines of her face as she spoke and he stood silently watching her for several moments after she'd finished speaking. She looked at him after his lack of reply drew her notice and seeing his gaze she dropped her eyes back down to the water. Cam sighed and looked out over the still black water himself. It was several minutes before his low voice broke the quiet darkness surrounding them.

"You know when I said it was a pleasure knowing you back at Elmendorf?" He could feel her turn towards him, he hadn't said those exact words and it had just been a ruse to throw off suspicion from their plans, but he had to tell her what he was really feeling at that time. "What I really wanted to say was I can't live the rest of my life without you, Sam. I wanted to tell General Landry that." He heard her breath hitch and he turned to face her, he could see her eyes were wide and shimmering in the moonlight, but she stood her ground which was a good sign. "We're not Air Force right now, Sam, and I think we both know the government can't really keep us apart if they tried, the only thing doing that is us," he motioned from her to himself, "you and me." She still made no move to walk away or contradict him so he pressed forward. "I'm not saying we're not going to do our damnedest to fix what's happened here, believe me I think this world bites the big one, the damn Navy in charge of the Stargate? It's sacrilege!" She grinned at that, looking down at the deck at their feet, and he smiled knowing he had a chance. "But I'm going to take a chance at what I want, Sam, and what I want is you. I love you, Samantha Carter." He watched her as she raised her head to look at him, a very serious look on her face.

"What happens if we set things right? Reverse everything as if it never happened?" Her eyes were fierce, he could see her hands were clenched under her elbows as she hugged herself in the cold.

"I will find a way, I promise you. I will make it happen." He reached a hand up slowly, tentatively to cup one of her cheeks. Her fiery blue eyes still had not left his, even as his fingers made contact with her skin, the determined, calculating look never left her face. After a few moments she raised one of her own hands to his chest, grabbing a fistful of his jacket she pulled him towards her and pressed her lips against his, leaning into him as he wrapped his arms around her back.

Daniel watched them from one of the darkened windows of the cabin, he chuckled to himself once, shook his head and turned away smiling.

* * *

Stargate Command, September 2009

Sam drew back the slider on the media player again and listened to the recording once more. She'd received uncompressed digital copies of the tapes from Walter after her debriefing on their scouting mission to P2R-128 and she'd been listening to them ever since in fascination. They described a world and events which couldn't be more different to the one they'd returned from the day before. It had turned out the UAV scans of the area around the 'gate had failed to spot the small enclave of villages nestled in the trees surrounding the Stargate. This made the planet unsuitable for their purposes, but it did bring them into contact with another interesting culture, one which Daniel was certainly giddy about. Matriarchal in nature and freed from Goa'uld slavery centuries earlier, the villagers kept a wary, but curious vigil over the 'Ring of the Gods'. Cam let her be the spokeswoman once it became clear that the villagers felt a little uncomfortable dealing with him. They also looked more favourably towards all the questions Daniel was asking once Sam implied that he was an assistant for their eminent scholar Vala, whom they immediately adored, much to Jackson's chagrin. Teal'c was Teal'c and the villagers treated him as they treated all warriors, warily. They slated the planet for further visits by diplomatic and cultural teams, preferably led by women, and returned home after several hours.

She'd long ago verified that the voice on the tapes was Cameron Mitchell. An eighty year old Cam at least. Once she'd added filters to take that into account the match probabilities shot up from the low seventies to the high nineties percentiles. It was indisputable, but she'd played this section of the recording over and over as she listened to something which was giving her great pause. She pushed a lock of her now sandy brown hair back around her ear and concentrated on the voice of Cameron Mitchell as he described Daniel getting shot in the side by a staff blast and falling off the catwalk into the chasm below the power core of Ba'al's stellar activity satellite monitoring outpost. She heard the pained, emotional timbre as he clearly relived the memory of seeing his friend die and it again brought a heavy lump to her throat as she listened. It was a tone she'd heard her own Cameron take when he spoke of friends he'd lost in the field or the sky during battle, and in hospital after succumbing to their injuries. However, that tone was as nothing compared to the raw emotion that overtook him as he spoke of her own death. As the recording played his voice grew hoarse and strained, it finally broke and fell away, there were several moments of silence interspersed with barely audible shuffling and rustling noises in the background, she could swear she heard a couple of near-silent sobs, before the voice came back for a few words before falling silent again and a loud click could be heard where the recording was clearly stopped. When it restarted the voice was still weak and strained and still faltered with the words as it described how she was shot in the back. It didn't elaborate beyond the barest facts, but the emotion in the voice hinted at what was left unsaid. She recalled the looks of pain and emotion on the faces of her teammates as they heard this portion of the recording and the look on Cam's face had scared her, as if he was clearly seeing what was being described in his own mind's eye, his own voice telling him how she died on a faraway planet. Vala also looked stunned and wan. The tape had ended not long after that and they had each retreated from the briefing room separately. Even after that first time hearing it described, it wasn't the events she'd focused on, but Cameron's voice. It was a voice she'd never heard from him. When he described her death she didn't hear a paean to a lost friend. It was deeper and sharper, a still raw wound even after forty years. Depths of pain that only accompanied the loss of the dearest part of one's soul.

"That's a bit morbid isn't it, Sam?" Dr. Bill Lee's voice startled Sam from her reverie on the emotion being revealed by the recording. "Listening to someone relate how you died over and over." He slid a mug of coffee along the table to her and she could feel the wetness on her cheeks, realising she'd been crying freely for the last several minutes.

"Ah, it's not that," she explained, smiling slightly in gratitude as she took the mug in both hands, "it's his voice. So much pain." Bill nodded and patted her arm before making his way out the door of her lab. She closed down the media player and began her report to Landry on her findings, trying desperately to regain her composure, glad only that it hadn't been Cam who had brought her a refill at that moment, unaware that he was standing outside her lab with his back pressed against the wall, nodding gratefully to Dr. Lee for taking in the coffee he'd brought for her in his stead.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Chapter 4**

Al Karj AB, Saudi Arabia, January 1991

She was hiding and she knew it. It wasn't what she did in the early hours of that mid-January morning that had her avoiding every other human being on the base, though that had been horrific enough. Her right hand was still shaking, the fingers and thumb which had sent missiles flying and bombs dropping from her F-15E Strike Eagle still convulsed periodically as she clenched her fists tight. When she closed her eyes she could see the targets painted on her radar and HUD by the EF-111 Ravens which had flown ahead of her sortie. It took no thought to flick a switch, flip the guard and press the release trigger with her thumb. The target disappeared not long afterwards, flying over those air fields and seeing the sight of the torn and burning fuselage of the Iraqi fighter planes still on the apron meant nothing. It was the sight of the bodies lying clear of the wreckage. Knowing the planes and buildings she'd destroyed weren't empty. She'd never killed anyone before today. That meant something, but it wasn't why she was hiding. It was what greeted her when she returned to base. The congratulations, the elation in the faces of the other pilots as they slapped her back and whooped and hollered. She pushed the disgust down at the time and shared a round with men she couldn't quite stand looking at in that moment. However, it was time to come to terms with it herself. So she'd found a spot to be alone, somewhere no one would think to look for her.

"Sorry, Sam." She looked up in amazement as Cameron sat down next to her, his shoulder just touching her own in the rapidly cooling desert night air. "Just... forget those assholes. This is how they cope with it."

"Captain! I'm fine, sir, just needed some air." She couldn't look at him. She couldn't bear to look into his eyes just now because she had to be a soldier.

"Call me by my rank in private again and I'll spank your ass, Sam. I mean it." he said in a deadpan voice without looking at her. She couldn't help the curl of her lip, but said nothing. She'd wanted to be alone, but now he was here it felt right somehow. She didn't know how he'd found her, how he'd even known to look for her at all, but the fact he did filled her heart with a warmth she wouldn't trade away for anything. It was many minutes before either of them spoke again. "I'm still not over it. I doubt I ever will be. It'll be something I'll relive in my last moments, I'm sure of it." He looked at her and the feeling of his eyes on her compelled her to find them with her own. She just looked into his deep blue eyes and saw that she'd never have to be alone. Not really, not where it counted. "It's not wrong to feel this way, Sam. It's not wrong." She bit the inside of her suddenly trembling lips and nodded, her eyes were getting misty, but she couldn't look away from his gaze. He could see how she felt deep down. He didn't feel the same, he didn't pretend to either, everyone was different, reacted differently, dealt with it in different ways, but his experiences were just close enough, his feelings were just similar enough, his response much of a muchness so that he could look into her eyes at that moment and without definitively saying the words, just tell her she wasn't alone. He turned away just before the first tear rolled down her cheek and sat silently at her side without saying anything further. She contained her sobs, tucking her head against her forearms laid on top of her knees.

They didn't speak again for an hour, just sat by each other under the night sky, having spent all day flying sortie after sortie, exhausted, but incapable of sleep. "Cam," she felt him shift slightly beside her to look at her, but she kept looking up into the sky, "I don't regret it." She felt him lean against her a bit more for a moment before easing away again.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 743 days relative

Cameron sat in the F302's first seat staring at the readouts and displays in the cockpit. He deliberately kept his hands away from the flight controls, simply checking off a mental list of diagnostics and settings to amuse himself. He'd been there for half an hour when he heard footsteps on the deckplates leading towards him and glanced over the side of the cockpit to see Sam climbing up the steps onto the gantry and getting into the second seat behind him. He hadn't seen much of her the last couple of weeks since he'd destroyed his quarters, nothing much beyond mealtimes and occasionally running into her as he ran through the corridors. She'd certainly never sought him out before.

"Daniel's worried about you." she said quietly after several minutes. He sighed as he realised that she had sought him out for someone else, not herself.

"I'm fine, Sam. Got it all out of my system. You can tell Jackson and the General I'm going to find an alternative way to express my frustration soon enough." he replied softly and the hitched breath from behind him made him think that perhaps his words needed some qualification.

"Cameron, you can't escape in a 302, there's not enough... Cam, no!" Her voice took on a slightly horrified tone and Cameron realised he had to say something.

"I'm not suicidal, Sam! I'm not even planning to escape." He felt her leaning back into her seat from where she had been leaning forward, gripping the back of his chair and the console ahead of her. "I just miss flying, that's why I'm here. I miss the sky." The sigh from behind him seemed to say she didn't quite believe him. "That's why I was thinking I'd start studying again. Stick my head into the Asgard Core until I can build myself a hyper-real simulator." He felt Sam leaning forward again.

"That's a good idea, Cam, I can do that for-" She looked surprised as he whipped his head around to interrupt her.

"No, Sam, you need to carry on with what you're doing. I'm doing this to keep myself busy, to keep from burning out." He sighed at the curious tilt of her head. "I expect you'll figure out a way to save us before I get halfway anyways. I have a lot to learn to get this working, holography for the display, anti-grav tech to simulate g-forces, software for the modelling, power and systems engineering to put it all together." Sam's eyes widened more and more as he spoke until he could only chuckle as he turned back to face forwards. "I did major in mechanical engineering at the Academy, Sam, I'll fill up my days productively from now on I promise." All was silent for several minutes as he flicked several switches in the console in front of him to access several core systems diagnostics screens.

"I was worried too." Her voice was so soft he almost thought he'd misheard her. He smiled slightly hoping she meant she wasn't just here at Jackson's behest. "I just need a bit more time, Cam."

"I have complete faith that you will get us all out of this, Sam. Don't sweat the timescale either." Just as he finished he felt her hand close on his shoulder from behind.

"That's not what I mean." She squeezed his shoulder once and smoothed down his flightsuit before pulling her hand away slowly when he turned his head towards her. "I've known you a long time, Cameron, and ever since the beginning you've made me..." She sighed deeply and looked down at her hands so he couldn't see her eyes from over his shoulder. "You have no idea what that grin of yours does, do you? What your voice did to all us female cadets at the Academy. How your scowl can be just as adorable as your smile." She was blushing, he could see it, he was blushing too, he could feel his ears burning. He turned back around and brought a hand to cover his mouth. "You've always had the same effect on me, Cam, for two decades you've made me feel like a giddy teenager and that kind of freaks me out, that you thought of me that way." He whipped around to interject.

"Sam, I never-" Her raised hand cut him off.

"I know, Cam. It wasn't until I joined SG-1 again and we spent time really working together that I could convince myself you saw me as a colleague and an equal. As a woman, not a girl." She looked up and met his eyes. "I'm a bit ashamed now that I ever thought you wouldn't, Cameron. I'm sorry about that. I let the way I felt when we met that first day colour my perceptions of you, and dictate a lot of how I acted towards you." She sighed heavily again and ran a hand through her now shoulder length hair. "I was just a kid. Older than you, but I'd been such a workaholic student after my Mom died that I'd never had much of a social life all the way through high school and my college degree and doctorate. Didn't help that I'd skipped several grades so I was younger than all my peers for much of those years too." She propped her head back against the headrest behind her. "I had no idea what love was. So when I met you I could only think what I felt was a crush, that a guy like you would never be interested in a naif like me." She smirked at the scowl that came over his face. "You don't have to say it. When you told me you... loved me, it just sent my mind back through my memories and a whole series of tiny niggling things you'd said or did over the years all started clicking into place and making sense and... geez, Cam, twenty years!" He looked down not able to meet her eyes. "Did you think you weren't good enough for me or something? Just a fly boy who could never keep up with the genius?" Her face was flushed with anger now, but he steadied himself and looked up to meet her ire, he certainly deserved it. "You were just as bad as me it turns out, right? All this time I've been getting into relationships that I knew deep down weren't going to work, I knew 'cause I was comparing them all to you! You told me Jonas was an ass the first time I mentioned him and you were right! Narim, Martouf, Orlin, how could anything have worked with them? Pete, Holy Hannah, Pete, even after I told him everything, I felt like I was still lying to him every day." She abruptly grew quiet, looking down past her console at her feet. Cam twisted further in his seat and propped himself up to reach past it and squeeze her upper arm. She flinched slightly, but he didn't release her. "And Jack. I loved him, Cam, I really did. No, I still do. I moved to Area 51 to get out of his chain of command so that..." She shook her head several times before lifting her eyes to look at him. She must be able to see the surprise in his eyes as she talked about General O'Neill, he'd had no idea. Her hand came up and gripped his fingers against her arm. "But I never did, I always put it off. When I heard you were taking over SG-1, I was constantly thinking of coming back. That's what you do to me, Cam, whenever you're near, I feel pulled towards you." She pulled his fingers from her arm and intertwined her own with them, running her thumb over the back of his hand. "I denied it for years, it was just a crush, I'd outgrow it. When you kept bugging me to come back to SG-1 I tried so hard to keep pushing you away even though I wanted the opposite." She chuckled mirthlessly for a moment. "When you flapped that patch in front of my face and flashed that stupid smile I bet you thought I was just giving in to your persistence didn't you? Or to the lure of being with Teal'c and Daniel again? I was surrendering to my own weakness." She let go of his hand and raised both of hers to her eyes.

"Sam, I-" He didn't get to finish his thought as she suddenly reached out past the headrest of his seat and grabbed both sides of his head. Standing up as far as possible she pulled him in to a deep, desperate kiss. He had no control whatsoever, his hands just trying to help him keep his balance as he was awkwardly turned in his seat. Her fingers pulling at his hair, her lips opening, her tongue flicking out and entering his mouth as he let her in. Abruptly she pulled away, breathing heavily, her eyes dark with need.

"I love you, Cameron Mitchell, so help me I do," her gaze softened, tears brimming as her fingers stroked the side of his face for a moment, "but I need time." She turned and scrambled out of the cockpit, ignoring his protestations she bounded down the metal steps and ran quickly towards the exit of the fighter bay. He slumped back down into his seat, sighing heavily, unable to quite understand what just happened. He touched fingers to his lips which felt bruised and raw from the force of her kiss. He'd never been kissed like that before. He closed his eyes for a long moment, more than ever determined that he would get his flight simulator idea operational. He wanted to fly again, but he wanted to fly with Sam most of all.

* * *

P4X-832, March 2008

"Sam?" He couldn't stifle the low groan as each breath sent fire through his abused ribs. Opening his eyes blearily, closing them tight against the harsh light, he froze as his awakening brain began once again receiving pain signals from every inch of his body at once.

"Still in Atlantis, thank God," muttered a familiar voice from his left, 'Jackson', his frazzled brain supplied, "or she'd kick your ass some more herself. Honestly, what were you thinking?" He turned his head slowly towards the archaeologist who was propped up against the wall of their cell giving him a disappointed look.

"Wasn't... not much anyway." He tried to relax his muscles against the cold floor, but that didn't help much at all so he just gritted his teeth. "Jus' that guy was three times our size an' I think he was beginning to take a liking to ya." He groaned in pain once more having finished the long sentence.

"Yes, yes, and whenever a bad guy takes a liking to me they inevitably end up torturing me to death." Jackson huffed angrily, but eventually just sighed.

"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc." Cam muttered trying very hard not to move. Daniel looked at him askance.

"What?" He couldn't quite hide the incredulity in his voice.

"It means-"

"I _know_ what it means, how do _you_ know what it means?" The archaeologist stared at his friend with his mouth slightly agape. Cam turned his head towards him and scowled as if affronted.

"Don' jus' watch sci-fi an' action films, Jackson. Thought 'The West Wing' was great." He had to close his eyes against the pain slightly. "And you of all people have to admit it feels good to whip out the Latin in proper context."

"Yes." He drew the confirmation out for several moments. "Although you do know it hardly ever works out the way the idiom lays it out right? It's a logical fallacy." Daniel raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

"Tha's what President Bartlett said too." Cam grinned and Daniel closed his eyes for a second.

"I suppose I should thank you anyways." he offered with a slight smirk.

"Don' mention it." Cam chanced a dismissive wave of his hand and regretted it, wincing. "How long have I been out?"

"About ten hours is my guess." Daniel looked at his bare wrist where his watch normally resided and pressed his lips together in frustration. "I expect Vala and Teal'c will find a way to spring us soon." Cam just nodded slightly without moving too much. "So why'd you call for Sam? She's been on Atlantis for months now."

"Dream. Odyssey." Just those two words were enough to have Daniel nodding. He'd told Jackson about the uncanny quality of some of the dreams he'd been having lately, invariably set on Odyssey. Daniel had admitted to having experienced something similar. Dreams which didn't feel like dreams. "If only we could get the T-man really drunk. Get 'im to spill." Both men chuckled at that which caused Cam to gasp in pain and Daniel to reach over to put a steadying hand over the other man's chest.

"Easy now, Mitchell. Let's save this for when we get back to base." Both men quieted upon hearing footsteps approaching from down the hall.

"I have found them, Vala Mal Doran." A robed behemoth stood before the barred door of their cell. Daniel stood up and walked towards him to clasp the man's forearm in greeting through the bars. He heard a clinking sound and quick jogging steps from further down and smiled involuntarily at the grinning face of the raven haired former smuggler.

"Hiya Daniel, didja miss me?" She quickly set about identifying the correct key for the lock as the Jaffa spoke once more.

"How is Colonel Mitchell, Daniel Jackson, he appears to be injured." Teal'c asked as Vala's eyes lifted in concern, but returned to their previous task almost immediately.

"Oh, you know, the usual. Opened his big mouth, took a beating, lay unconscious for a while." He turned to see Cam giving him the finger with a pained smile on his face. "He's going to be one big walking bruise, Teal'c, so he'll need a hand." The Jaffa nodded in understanding just as the lock clicked and the door swung open.

"Viola!" cried Vala as she stepped into the cell and wrapped her hands around Daniel's arm. Teal'c stepped past them towards the downed Air Force Colonel and helped him slowly to his feet, where he spent several seconds breathing heavily in pain before nodding his insistence that he could proceed with their escape plans.

"That's a musical instrument, Vala, you mean to say 'voila' which is French." Daniel took the weapon she offered him and preceded her out into the corridor to provide cover. Vala huffed and followed him out.

"Why do you Tau'ri insist on having so many languages? It's such a pain! Everyone else in the galaxy makes do with a few dozen between them and your little backwater feels the need to yammer on with several thousand." Vala grumped as she covered the far corner until the rest moved up.

"You should have heard Mitchell breaking out the Latin earlier." Daniel indicated over his shoulder at the soldier leaning heavily against Teal'c.

"Indeed?" Teal'c raised an eyebrow while looking down at the man.

"I was totally awesome." said Cam with a grin.

"You know, I liked it much better when I thought they were saying my name on those TV shows whenever they finished picking a lock or opening a safe, like an homage, and yes I know that's French too." Vala said as Jackson passed her by to the next corner. Daniel pressed his lips together as he looked at her in irritation. "I thought I was famous or something."

Daniel and Vala managed to bicker all the way through the small gaol building, through all the while they grabbed Jackson's and Mitchell's gear from the storage room after stunning a few more guards, all the way through the darkened streets of the small town and down the road which led to the Stargate, only pausing momentarily while they travelled through the wormhole back to the SGC before picking up exactly where they left off.

"I love my team." Cam said while Teal'c helped him lay down on the gurney surrounded by medics and a very annoyed Dr. Carolyn Lam. The Jaffa gave a tiny smile and bowed slightly.

* * *

Stargate Command, September 2009

Cam kicked off from the wall he was leaning against outside Sam's lab and walked away down the corridor. His hand hovered over the pocket of his BDUs where the platinum ring looped through a silver linked chain was stored. Dipping his fingers into the pocket he touched the warm metal before letting his hand drop down to his side once more. The ring had been inside the envelope marked for his eyes only and the letter which accompanied it was as startling to him as anything else which had come in the parcel. Equal parts hope, joy and indescribable pain. There was a tape describing in fuller detail things which he'd omitted from the audio report, personal things. Also a short note which had been folded around the ring itself and read only 'I had five months, the me on Odyssey had maybe five decades if he was smart. Try to get somewhere in between.' Some might call it cryptic, but it would have been clear as day to Cam even had he not listened to the tape.

He rounded the corner and was surprised to see the light on in the office assigned to him, which he used to write his reports and hide from Vala when Daniel kicked her out of his lab. It seemed she was still unaware he had an office despite being a member of SG-1 for over two years. He approached warily and was surprised and apprehensive at finding General O'Neill sitting in his chair. He stepped inside and came to attention.

"Were you looking for me, General?" he asked, staring at a point in the wall behind O'Neill.

"This used to be my office before they pinned stars on my shoulders." He motioned at the three stars on each of his epaulettes and there was definitely no implied 'at ease' in the General's tone so Cam remained stock still. "Spent less time in here during those seven years than I did in General Hammond's office when I took over the place." O'Neill spent at least a minute staring hard at Mitchell before waving a hand and leaning back in the seat. Cam relaxed slightly and stared curiously at the former leader of SG-1. "It was my knees, you know, or I'd never have let you have my team."

"Yes, sir." Cam tried to keep his face studiously neutral while Jack's eyes twinkled, the General nodded to indicate the open door behind Cam and he closed it before turning back to face the older man.

"So... how long?" Jack's tone was breezy, but there was a steely undertone Cam did not miss.

"Sir?" He tried to convey the confusion he felt, but the slight scowl on O'Neill's face gave him pause.

"How long've you been in love with Carter?" There was definitely steel there, Cam cursed mentally and pursed his lips, he opened his mouth to deny it, or tell him it was private, or maybe to tell him where to get off, but O'Neill interrupted. "Don't try to palm me off either, Mitchell." Cam clenched his jaw and frowned angrily.

"Since the Academy... sir." he replied quietly, not trusting his voice to stay steady if he spoke any louder.

"Christ, you're more pathetic than I ever was!" Jack snapped, standing up and walking around the desk as Mitchell came to attention again. O'Neill came to stand nose to nose with him and gave him a hard look. "Don't screw it up, Mitchell. I'll kill you myself if you do." He grabbed his cover from the desk and walked past the younger man and stopped as he opened the door. "Don't know how much praise you deserve for something you've technically never done..." His gaze became unfocused for a second before he shook his head. "Good job killing Ba'al." He walked away down the corridor and Cam felt a shiver run up his spine.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Chapter 5**

Stargate Command, October 2005

She'd been back on base for less than a month and it felt like she'd never left. With one glaring exception, Jack was nowhere in sight. General Landry was easy to work for, he was affable at the right time, commanding when he needed to be, and he genuinely cared about those under his leadership, but the SGC without Jack was taking some getting used to. For more people than just her. He'd been such a fixture of the place it was almost surreal now that he wasn't here. Still there was work to do, the Ori were a threat unlike any she'd ever faced and now there was the aftermath of the collapse of the Goa'uld System Lords thrusting forward new organisations into the power vacuum they'd left behind. The Free Jaffa were also going to need all the support they could get to make it through this transitional period, but the things closest to home always stood out the most. Such as the glaring exception she'd just been thinking about. Cam Mitchell stuck his head in the door of her lab and grinned. Make that two glaring exceptions.

"Hey Cam." she greeted him with a smile. He nodded and walked in with his hands in his pockets, returning her smile with one of his own. He moved a stool closer to the table from the wall on the opposite side of her bench, and sat down. "It's good you're here. I was just thinking of a testing plan for the Sodan cloaking device we've acquired. It's fascinating technology. I'm still not sure how it works, but I know I'll figure it out." She looked up and he nodded and smiled, glancing down at the file she'd handed over to him and flipping the page occasionally. Her eyes strayed down his jaw from the cuts and abrasions that were still visible on his face, down to the bruise on his neck were he'd been choked into unconsciousness by Jolan during the ritual of Kel'shak Loh. As soon as Volnek had passed through the event horizon on the Stargate and the wormhole had disengaged, Cam's knees had buckled and he'd collapsed at the foot of the ramp. Only his stupid pride had been keeping him upright the whole time since he'd returned himself. Sam's heart had jumped into her throat as soon as it happened, but here he was in her lab, just reading some technical figures in her report as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't nearly died at least twice in a week. She gritted her teeth at the memory. He could be so infuriating sometimes. After a few moments she just sighed. That's just how Cam was. She looked at her laptop and the scanners attached to the cloaking device by leads. The program she was using to test for frequency feedback could run on its own for a while and it was past noon. Might as well get some food. "Want to go grab a bite in the mess, Cam?" He looked up and grinned in a way which set off all her alarm bells. She'd known Cam a long time and there were looks of his that immediately screamed 'Trouble'. He stood up and motioned towards the door and they walked out together to make their way to the commissary.

When they arrived she saw Daniel and Teal'c sitting at a table and waved happily at them as she and Cam went through the line to grab food. She sat down next to Daniel and Cam sat across from her next to the Jaffa. He began eating immediately.

"Hey Sam, surprised you came out of your lab in time for lunch." said the archaeologist, although he was looking curiously at Cam.

"Well, the tests I was running can take care of themselves for a bit and Cam was loitering in my lab looking like a lost puppy. I decided to take pity on the new guy and invited him to lunch." She smiled and Cam looked up, giving her a glare and a smirk. When she looked at Daniel his surprise was disconcerting. Teal'c had one eyebrow raised while looking between her and Cameron.

"Did he say anything when he came to see you?" Daniel asked her as he narrowed his eyes.

"No, nothing, why?" she asked as she put a forkful of salad into her mouth. Cam was looking at Daniel with a neutral expression as he ate some pasta.

"So you're saying you left your lab to get lunch, not only voluntarily, but at your urging, and Mitchell didn't have to say a word?" Daniel looked very confused. Sam _felt_ very confused. What were they talking about? Cam held a hand out palm up towards Daniel and the archaeologist pinched the bridge of his nose before sticking a hand in his pocket, taking out his wallet and shoving a hundred dollar bill in the SG-1 leader's hand. Sam groaned as she realised what had happened. Teal'c turned towards Cameron with a look of new found respect.

"Most impressive, Colonel Mitchell." He bobbed his head up and down with a slight smile. "The work of a true warrior." Cam grinned and Sam gaped.

"Oh, come on, Teal'c, it's not that hard to get me out of the lab!" she cried and Teal'c turned to her giving her a look which told her he thought even she didn't believe what she had just said.

"Indeed not, Colonel Carter. I know exactly how difficult it is to remove your from your lab at any time, even in an attempt to find you sustenance." Teal'c spoke softly as if recounting tales of past battles. "To accomplish the task without words, indeed, to turn the tables so completely on such an implacable foe as your scientific curiosity is the achievement of a true master." He turned back to Cam and bowed his head deeply. Sam was dismayed.

"Too easy." Cam said at last through a mouthful of pasta and she realised that was the first time he'd spoken since he entered her lab. Well she was going to make his next words ones of her own choosing and she aimed a vicious kick to his shin under the table. "Oooowwwww!"

"Shut up and eat your food!" she snapped at him and he just indicated his half-eaten plate.

"My God, he's like your kryptonite, Sam." said Daniel incredulously. She whirled on him and he startled in surprise.

"You shut up too or I'll go back to my lab!" She glared at him.

"No, you won't." Cam retorted, shovelling some more pasta in his mouth without looking up.

"Okay, I won't, but... urg!" She groaned and covered her face with her hands. "Damn you, Cam Mitchell." she muttered under her breath.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 792 days relative

Cam's run through the humming corridors of the ship came to a now routine pause outside the Asgard Core room. He held himself against the wall and stretched his quads and hamstrings as he once more concentrated on the music drifting through the metal door from the room beyond. A haunting melody, sliding off the strings of Sam's cello as she moved the bow expertly across the face of the instrument. Over two years of daily practice had made her very good, and he always found himself here every day at this time, the intersection of his desire and her control. He pressed his forehead against the cool metal bulkhead and felt the vibrations of the ship against his skin, constant, unnoticed except for now when he was straining to make out the vibrations coming from her instrument. It wasn't enough to hear it through the walls anymore. He moved to the side slightly and pressed the door stud to gain entry. She didn't stop at the surprise intrusion, but did look up to watch him as he stepped in and sat down against the wall by the door to watch her.

"I hear you playing as I run." he said softly, running a hand over his head, pushing sweat slicked hair back from his forehead.

"I know." she replied without pausing.

"I stop outside so I can listen to you practice for a few minutes." He indicated the door with a wave of his hand.

"I know." She smiled as she replied this time and he realised this was as much a morning ritual for her as it was for him. That she was aware of him just beyond her door, his running footfalls halting for several minutes as she played before restarting.

"Didn't come in before 'cause I know some people don't like an audience when they're new to something." He looked at her and she nodded, the fingers of her left hand stiffening for a vibrato on the strings. "I think you're good enough for an audience now." She looked at him again, her eyes shining. He fell silent and listened to her playing, the difference between hearing it through the bulkhead and listening in the same room was palpable. He could feel it in his bones. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, the notes washed over him and soothed away the edginess from his nervous frustration. Sighing softly he rested his elbows on his knees and brought his hands up to cover his face.

When Sam finished the last drawn out, quavering note he remained still. He heard her get up from her seat and pad over to him. When he felt the heat from her kneeling down beside him he let his hands drop from his face and turned his head to look at her. When their eyes met he saw the brilliant blue fire shining in them and he reached out a hand to caress her cheek and she leaned in to rest her forehead against his.

"I want you to be my audience, Cam." she whispered, her breath brushing against his skin.

"I know." he replied, tilting his face upwards to meet her lips with his.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 1,045 days relative

Sam had run into a bit of a dead end in her research with the Asgard Core and was just rubbing at her eyes in a daze when she heard the door of the room swish open, turning around she saw Cam slide in, grinning, she smiled inwardly and swivelled in her chair to face him, crossing her arms. Here comes trouble.

"My name is Cam Mitchell, a fighter pilot. I joined SG-1 and I got _shot_ through a wormhole. Now I'm stuck in a time dilation field, on a ship, an _Air Force_ ship, full of _strange_ sarcastic teammates. Help me. Listen, please. Is there anybody out there who can hear me? I'm being _hunted_ by insane religious zealots. Doing everything I can. I'm just looking for a way home." Cam struck a pose. Sam had brought a hand up to her face halfway through his little spiel, and was now shaking her head at him in dismay.

"Cam, if you and Teal'c don't take it easy with the ship's entertainment library you'll run out of things to watch soon." she said, hiding her smile.

"You kidding? We ran out of things to watch last year, we're going back through it again now. You have to see this show, Sam." He smiled and walked towards her taking her hands in his own.

"I've watched the first two seasons already, Cam, remember our movie nights back on base? Vala suggested the show after we had the meeting with Martin Lloyd." she elaborated, but didn't resist when he helped her up out of the seat. Somehow Cam _always_ knew when she badly needed a break and showed up to whisk her away.

"Then you gotta watch the rest! Season three is when things get really crazy!" He began leading her to the doors and out into the corridor towards the rec-room and the mini-theatre the team had set up.

"Okay, but only if we get to watch the one that was like a western in space afterwards." she said. He grinned, more than satisfied with that proposal. "Except for those two episodes with the busty red-head, you like those a bit too much." She couldn't help teasing him and he predictably turned a scowl towards her.

"Oh, come on! You're killin' me here. You get the brooding, snarky captain in every episode, you can at least let me have the two episodes with the red-head." He pouted dramatically.

"I'm already spotting you the space courtesan." she teased a little more.

"She gives me a weird vibe, something about the actress reminds me of someone, how does the merc put it? It's downright unsettlin'." he quoted to her laugh. "Jackson, on the other hand, finds her fascinating." She laughed again.

"I prefer the doctor to the captain anyway." Sam continued to dig into him, but he smiled at that.

"No can do, darlin', Vala called dibs on him." He laughed as she huffed. He gave her hand a squeeze and she leaned into him as they walked together. "That show should never have been cancelled." he mused and she chuckled.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 3,261 days relative

"Ya know, with other couples, the man just has to fix the plumbin' when the taps start to leak. You've got me workin' on a hyper-advanced computer system designed by little grey space aliens." Cam joked, staring into the brightly lit guts of the Asgard Core, as pulses of light flowed through the crystalline pathways revealed by the panel he'd pried off at the base of the smooth console.

"Maybe you're right." came Sam's voice from the other side of the system where she was checking over the readings as he worked. "I'd probably be the better choice to do that." She was teasing him and he grinned. Truth be told he'd developed quite a good working knowledge of these Asgard systems as he continued to work on his simulator. He was just working out some kinks and had already logged some very impressive flights in the recreation of the F302 he was modelling with the system, it made sense to use one of the real fighters as the control interface after all. "I think I'm going to have to go check the crystals manually down in the power core, I'll be right back, Cam." He raised a hand over the back of the console without getting up from his prone position and waved her off. A few minutes after she left he checked a connection between two crystals and received a large shock which left him yelping in pain with his right hand flapping limply, having gone numb.

"Are you injured, Colonel Mitchell?" came a vaguely familiar voice from the other side of the console, but he was sure no one had come in.

"No no, just got a bit of a shock, I'll be-" He stopped in surprise when he levered himself to look over the console and found himself staring into the large limpid black eyes of an Asgard. Somehow he'd reactivated the hologram of Thor which Sam had switched off all those years ago. It seemed different though, he never remembered that program ever showing initiative or even recognising him at all, it just answered questions. He frowned at it, deep in thought. "Sam said she switched you off, somethin' 'bout the constant repetition drivin' her buggy. She also said it just wasn't the same as the real Thor."

"Colonel Carter disabled the avatar I included with the basic Core interface? Hmm, perhaps the personality engrams were insufficient. Humans are oddly perceptive about such things and react to the near-accuracy in a more negative manner than they would to something far less accurate." The hologramatic Thor blinked slowly and tilted his head, and not in the stilted way the other hologram had.

"Yeah, we call that the uncanny valley. It creeps us out." Cam offered, still frowning, it was dawning on him this was not that earlier hologram at all.

"I believe that is how O'Neill would put it, yes." Thor offered.

"So you're not that interface avatar." Cam stated. Thor blinked again and nodded.

"That is correct. You have activated the consciousness simulation routines embedded in the Core. Although from your reaction I believe this to have been inadvertent." The hologram was even simulating the autonomic functions of the Asgard physiology such as breathing, which is another thing the other hologram never did.

"You could say that, Sam and I were trying to track down the source of some fluctuations in the neutrino-ion core energy distribution graphs. I musta knocked something loose down here." He indicated the open panel at his feet with a glance.

"I see, although I do not see how that would be possible with mere physical tinkering." Thor's tone made Cam think he was being ribbed by the Asgard and he smiled. "We were certain you would not be able to discover, let alone access, this part of the Core for a great deal of time. Not until you were prepared to act on it." Cam looked confused.

"I don't follow, Thor." Cam said with a frown.

"When we entrusted you with our legacy," Thor indicated the Core, "we were also entrusting you with our future, Colonel Mitchell." Realisation flowed across Cam's face.

"You didn't just commit suicide! You've stored your consciousnesses in the core in hopes we could someday revive your species!" Cam cried in wonder.

"That is correct. Although if what I'm reading from the ship's sensors is true you are in no position to act on any of this at all, in fact my being here may be detrimental to you." Thor raised a hand to his chin in thought for a moment.

"No way, Sam is going to be super happy! We're stuck in a time dilation field and-" Cam began enthusiastically only to be stopped by Thor's resigned shake of his head.

"I can be of no help to Colonel Carter in this. From what I can see her research into temporal mechanics already goes far beyond anything any Asgard scientists were attempting. Time reversal? A concept we had never turned our minds to. We never had the occasion to do so." Thor blinked slowly once more.

"But still, having you or one of the Asgard scientists around to bounce ideas off will be a great help for her." Cam's smile faded again as Thor shook his head.

"One thing I can tell is that any plan she devises will require massive amounts of power. Power which is draining away as the simulation routines modelling my consciousness tax the processing elements of the Core. That was one reason for the limited nature of the interface avatar after all." Thor looked at Cam with sadness. "You should deactivate this simulation, Colonel Mitchell. Conserve the power for when it is required." Cam sighed in resignation and ran a hand over his eyes.

"Are you sure, Thor?" he asked, to which the Asgard nodded. "Alright, tell me how." The hologram pointed at certain controls and recited several command sequences. "She's going to kill me for not letting her talk to you."

"I believe Colonel Carter will be pleased to know we are not gone, Colonel Mitchell." Thor said, to which Cam could see the logic. "Farewell, Colonel."

"I hope to see you sometime in the future, Thor." Cam said and deactivated the hologram. He sighed and stared sadly at where the hologram had been standing before getting back down to examine what he had been fiddling with when the hologram appeared. Sam came back into the room about fifteen minutes later saying she'd found some odd looking readings from several of the crystals which she wanted him to check out with her and he agreed. On the way he told her about the stored consciousnesses he'd found out about and she nearly bolted back to the Core room until he told her about Thor's warning. Turns out both Cam and Thor had been right about Sam's reaction. She was happy the Asgard were not as dead as they at first seemed, but she also kicked his ass for deactivating the hologram before she arrived. He consoled her with an arm around her shoulder after she'd calmed down.

* * *

Stargate Command, September 2009

Sam was just finishing the report and emailing it to Landry when she looked up at the noise from her door and instantly stood up to come to attention as Jack came into the room. He immediately waved her down.

"At ease, Carter, geez." He gave her an almost irritated glare and tossed his cover onto her lab bench. She smiled and sat back down. He looked around her lab as if seeing it for the first time. Wandering over to one of the shelves along the wall he started poking and fingering various bits of equipment and experimental technology she had stored on them. She couldn't help but smile at the nostalgia evoked in her as he walked around messing with her stuff.

"Heading back to Washington soon, sir?" she asked lightly, but regretted it when she saw the look in his eye after he turned to face her. "Not that you're not welcome here of course, we love... I love having you here." God, that came out all wrong.

"Sometimes I forget you're the smartest person in three continents, Carter." He came to stand by her table. "Then you astound me with your wit, your elan, your panache." She grinned. "Thanks for that word-a-day calendar by the way." He looked down at the scanner under his hands and fiddled with the leads. "The Joint Chiefs think I've had some of that fancy book learnin' now."

"We've always known you're way smarter than you look, sir." She smiled as he glared at her for a while.

"To answer your question, yes I'll be heading off later today." He puffed out his cheeks and bounced on his heels. "Was thinking of taking you, Danny and Teal'c out for lunch, are we still banned from that steak place in town?"

"I'm afraid so, sir. Although if you show up in your dress blues," she indicated his outfit, "they might lift it now that you're a fancy general."

"A fancy-_schmancy_ general, Carter." he reprimanded.

"Yes, sir." She grinned and he smiled hesitantly. He looked a little distracted just then. "Anything wrong, sir?" He looked up and gave her a searching look.

"I'll always be 'sir' to you, won't I?" he asked softly. She looked down at the suddenly serious turn the conversation had taken. She really didn't know what to say to that. She wasn't sure what he even expected. She had left the SGC to go to Area 51 in hopes that something, _anything_, would change between them, and although she'd be the first to admit that she hadn't exactly pushed for anything, the lack of any movement at his end had been a bit glaring too. Then Cam had taken over SG-1 and he just seemed to pull her back into his orbit again. She sighed, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth. Why was he asking her this now?

"And I'll always be 'Carter' to you, right?" she asked when she could finally meet his gaze. He looked at her for several moments before turning away slightly. It had come out a bit harsher than she'd hoped, but the lack of an answer was telling. She walked around the table and grabbed her coat. "Let's go find Daniel and Teal'c. Lunch sounds really good right about now." Jack grabbed his cover from the table and joined her at the door.

"Let's invite Mitchell and Vala too. I really haven't spent enough time with interstellar smugglers lately." He smiled, almost like his usual self.

"_Former_ interstellar smuggler. She's very particular about that." Sam smiled as they walked down the hall. He voiced a little 'ah' and nodded deeply. "Heard from Ms. Johnson lately?" she broached the possibly dangerous subject, hoping a quick strike might help them both move on more easily.

"Kerry? Yah, she wants to invite me as her plus one to some fancy do in Georgetown next month. I suppose she thinks having a general on her arm will win her some brownie points." he said with a slow smile.

"Fancy-_schmancy_ do." she rebutted smiling. "Must be hard being the trophy boyfriend." she joked lightly and was rewarded with a smile as they reached the elevator.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Chapter 6**

USS Odyssey, Ori Galaxy, June 2007

Sam held her hand up to the comm in her ear as she heard Cam up on the bridge.

"Sam? Can you take command for a bit, I'm gonna pass out now." Very funny, Cam, where's that chuckle damn it!

"Marks, get internal doors open right now, I want the elevators back online as well!" she cried. Major Kevin Marks snapped to the task, his hands flying over the consoles as he worked to override the command sequences the Replicators had changed. Sam ran to the intercom panel and stabbed down the ship-wide broadcast button. "This is Colonel Carter, Medics to the bridge as soon as those doors open!" she ordered and moved to the door and banged on it to get the attention of the fire team on the other side. "Captain, cut me out of this room!" She heard the acknowledgement and went back to the Asgard Core to work on getting the hyperdrive back online.

"Colonel, I've got the doors open, and we're being hailed by one of the Ori ships." Marks turned to face her. "They're asking what they should do." Sam paused and looked at him incredulously. He shrugged.

"Tell them to go home. We'll call them later." She turned back to the core again and opened the panel at the front to work on the control crystals. "General Landry can deal with them now."

Fifteen minutes later she'd regained control of the hyperdrive and set the ship on course back to Celestis. Binder's team outside finished cutting through the door and she stepped out along with Marks and handed the captain her weapons.

"Marks, get to the bridge, I'm going to the infirmary." She'd had enough of the spotty updates from the medics, she had to see Cam for herself. She ran through the ship's corridors and up an elevator until she got to the infirmary, slapping the door access button she walked in to see the medics crowding around a bed with machines and carts pushed into the available spaces around them. "Holy Hannah!" she exclaimed and stopped a nurse who was sorting IV bags for possible use later and asked for an update.

"We found him slumped in the command chair, I have no idea how he managed to make it to the bridge from the cargo hold, he shouldn't be able to walk. He took a Hell of a beating, several severe lacerations, almost as if the assailant was wearing armoured gloves, broken ribs, hairline fractures in a few more and in his right arm and leg, bruises in places I'd never seen before. His left eye is swollen shut and someone should really tell him not to punch things made of metal, his hands are a mess. Basically he went ten rounds with a meat tenderiser and I think he lost." As the nurse spoke Sam caught glimpses of Cameron through the press of medics, his shirt and trouser legs cut open, an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, his hand hanging limply at his side. It looked frightening, but the beeping from his heart monitor was steady and the rise and fall of his chest seemed strong. She sighed, feeling some of her tension draining away. Cam was one of the toughest men she'd ever met.

"He's not dead, so as far as I'm concerned he won. I bet he'll be trying to escape by tomorrow." she said softly trying to convince herself of her high spirits as much as the nurse, who chuckled while picking up one of the IV bags she'd prepared.

"That's what Dr. Lam's note read when we opened his medical jacket. 'Restrain patient if necessary'." At that Sam had to smile and even laugh.

* * *

Stargate Command, June 2007

Cam caught up with Sam as she walked down the corridor to the briefing room. All of SG-1 had been summoned and he had no clue as to why. She smiled as he sidled up to her and bumped her shoulder lightly.

"Hey Cam? Feeling better?" she asked. He had been pretty badly injured in that fight with the replicator Marrick on Odyssey, he was still tender and stiff in some places, but it had been a couple of weeks now and he was itching to at least go off-world again. He was dying for just a simple recon mission.

"I'm back to 100%, Sam," he lied, "just want to get back out there," that was the truth, "think that's what this meeting's about?" He looked at her inquisitively and she shrugged.

"I have no idea, I'm afraid." They were getting to the briefing room doors when they ran into Daniel and Vala coming from the opposite direction. "Hey guys, don't suppose you have any idea what's going on?" she asked them. Daniel shrugged with his hands in his pockets.

"I think your Government is going to reward us for ending the Ori threat. I'm hoping for precious metals or jewels myself." said Vala, to which Daniel rolled his eyes and pursed his lips.

"That's not how this works, Vala." he said in exasperation, obviously this was a conversation they'd had before. The four filed in to see Teal'c standing by the window looking down over the Stargate, he turned and bowed when they walked in and greeted him, he smiled at each of them warmly. They each sat down in chairs around the table to wait for General Landry, talking about what might be happening, Cam reiterated his hope that it was a recon mission, the idea of which Teal'c reacted favourably to. Vala once more explained her wish it would be a grand reward, much to Daniel's continued and growing irritation. Landry walked in presently and the two Air Force officers stood immediately to attention until he sat himself down, at which point they seated themselves again.

"I have good news and bad news." Landry intoned looking at each in turn. He turned to Teal'c, Vala and Daniel on one side of the table before speaking again. "The President has decided to award you three the Medal of Freedom, in secret of course, for your part in ending the Ori threat." Vala was grinning and elbowing Daniel in his side, he had to slap down on her wayward arm as he closed his eyes at the pain in his ribs.

"Is this Medal made of precious metals?" Vala launched in with questions to the General, when he replied in the negative she asked another, "Is it encrusted with jewels then?" Again he told her it wasn't, that in fact the medal wasn't of any particular value at all except symbolic. Vala looked a bit put out. "Does it come with an additional cash prize or other remuneration?" Daniel was now trying to shut her up as he noticed that the general's patience was waning.

"It comes with the thanks of a grateful nation, Vala." said the General. To which Vala muttered under her breath about how could a nation which had no idea what happened be at all grateful. Daniel and Teal'c merely stated how honoured they were.

"What's the bad news, sir?" asked Cam in an attempt to change the subject as it looked like Vala was about to start asking more questions about the so-called reward.

"The bad news, Lt. Colonel Mitchell, is that both you and Lt. Colonel Carter are being promoted to full Colonels." He stood up and both he and Sam instantly followed suit, only then did they notice Chief Harriman had come up the stairs behind them and walked to the General handing him two sealed envelopes. Sam looked at Cam nonplussed and he too was showing his surprise. Across the table Daniel was grinning at them and Teal'c was smiling and nodding his approval. Vala was looking excited, giving them both thumbs-up gestures. Until a curious expression crossed her face.

"Why is this bad news?" she asked.

"Because now I'm gonna have to sign out forms in triplicate just to go to the head, Vala." Cam joked about his expectation of an increase in paperwork to which Vala gave a silent 'oh'. Sam grinned at him.

"There will be an official ceremony later this week." Landry announced as he handed an envelope to each of them, smiling and congratulating them.

"Sir, could I request that Sam be the one to pin the birds on my shoulders?" Cam asked softly much to Sam's surprise. She could feel the heat in her cheeks rising and the look in his eyes when she turned to him to find him staring at her didn't help her thundering heart.

"I have no objection, son. Carter?" Landry raised both eyebrows at her.

"Ah, yes, I'd be happy to, sir, as long as Cam does the same for me." She smiled at Cam's sheepish grin and Landry nodded with a smile.

"That's settled then. Congratulations, Colonel Mitchell, Colonel Carter." He shook each of their hands.

* * *

Austin, Texas, January 2009 (alternate timeline)

Cam killed the engine of his Mustang as he arrived at the house in the suburbs of Austin which he jokingly referred to as 'anti-home'. Sometimes he would chuckle to himself as he pictured this house and his house in Colorado Springs annihilating themselves in a brilliant flash of heat and energy if they ever somehow came into contact with each other. Stepping out of the car he spotted his neighbour and her son walking towards him and he groaned inwardly to himself. Outwardly he put on a pleasant smile and leaned against the roof of his car, waving to them in greeting.

"Afternoon, Mrs. Robertson, hey slugger." he said as he gave the boy a thumbs up. He liked the kid, but his mother always seemed to try and use him to get to Cam. The boy waved happily at him and ran around the car to look at it from different angles.

"Please, Cam, how many times have I told you, it's Heather." She smiled coyly at him and he squirmed slightly. He had very little intention of calling her Heather. He was sure she'd take it as some sort of invitation.

"Right, right, sorry. How are you two today?" He smiled at the boy, but had to turn his gaze to Heather as she was moving around the hood of the car, running her hand along it while watching him suggestively. Oh boy. Trouble.

"We're going to see a movie about a guy who can bring characters from books to life in the real world! Do you wanna come with us, Cam?" asked the boy as he ran around the back of the car and grabbed Cam's wrist.

"You're welcome to come, Cam, I'd like it very much." said Heather in that tone of voice he could only cringe at. If it had just been the kid he probably would have gone, he liked spending time with the boy, but not if he was going to have to endure his mother.

"Ah, sorry, but I just got back from a long drive." He eased the boy's grip on his wrist and walked to the back of his Mustang, opening the trunk. "Was in California checking out a 1970 HEMI 'Cuda in an auction." The boy's eyes lit up at the mention of the muscle car while Heather crossed her arms slightly. "Went up to see my girl too." he said, definitely for Heather's benefit.

"Your girlfriend who works out of state." she said icily. He made a point to smile when he nodded at her. "You know, you and I are in the same boat, Cam, Jeff spends so much time off shore on the oil rigs I hardly ever see him."

"Yeah, I know how you feel, which makes every moment I can spend with her that much more important to me." he said, throwing his duffel over his shoulder, closing the trunk and ruffling the boy's hair before walking around Heather. "Enjoy your movie now, tell me if it's any good, okay, kiddo?" He waved at them and quickly entered his house. He did not miss the little glare Heather was giving him there at the end. He fished in his duffel for his 'team' phone and dialled Daniel's number. Dumping the duffel he waited until the archaeologist picked up and said hello.

"Jackson! I'm gonna propose to Sam. Gotta do it." He heard Daniel chuckling on the other end.

"Well it's about time, but why is it 'gotta'?" asked his friend.

"'Cause I love her... and 'cause I think my neighbour is gonna jump me soon if I can't prove to her I'm in a relationship." he explained and Jackson started laughing, so he moved to the kitchen and started checking his computer for activity around the house and with his handlers. Everything seemed normal.

"This is the neighbour who's been throwing herself at you since you arrived?" asked Daniel, his voice filled with amusement. Cam confirmed it. "The one who's married." Laughter burst out from the phone and Cam sighed, seeing his friend's logic.

"Crap. You're right. Still, I'm gonna do it. I want to do it even if we have to hide it." He paused for a moment in consideration while Daniel told him he thought it was a fine idea. "Daniel, would you be my best man?"

"Of course, Cam, though I think Sam's going to want me to give her away. I suppose I could do both." said Daniel light-heartedly.

"Just be careful in case Sam asks you to be maid-of-honour too." he said, laughing.

* * *

Rosarito, Mexico, February 15th, 2009 (alternate timeline)

Sam woke up to the sound of the surf. Waves crashing against the beach, the cool breeze through the windows bringing the sound of sea birds and playing children. The first thing she noticed was that she wasn't alone, very much not alone. Her head was lying in the crook of an arm, resting against a muscled shoulder, her own arm was draped across a slender, but well-toned chest. She noticed the platinum band on her ring finger and everything came back to her and she smiled happily, snuggling closer to the body she was pressed against. She got married yesterday, on Valentine's day, on a beach in Mexico, Daniel had given her away, it felt right. She heard a moan, felt it rumbling in the chest she rested against and the hand attached to the arm under her head moved up the bare skin of her back in a long slow caress to squeeze her shoulder gently.

"Morning, Mr. Carter." she teased, and received a yawning chuckle in return.

"Mornin', Dr. Mitchell." The voice still husky with sleep made her shiver in pleasure and she smiled broadly as her husband leaned his head over and gave her a quick peck on the lips.

The three travelled to the resort town on the Pacific Coast using the aliases Daniel had arranged for them, while a little pecuniary persuasion a few weeks before had been enough to have the local civil authorities draw up the matrimonial paperwork in their real names. So on the desk in the other room of their suite were several pieces of perfectly legal documentation stating that Cameron James Mitchell and Samantha Louise Carter were now man and wife. It made her smile. If only they could declare it to the world, but when they had to go back to the lives thrust upon them by the U.S. Government they'd have to hide it away.

"We came down to Mexico to make sure we wouldn't be hassled 'bout the names on the license, not as if we're gonna declare it to the federal, state or locals when we get back, right?" He looked at her and she nodded. "Didn't get married for them. Did it for us."

"How did you know that's what I was thinking about?" She propped her chin on his chest and looked at him searchingly, he turned his head towards her and grinned.

"You kidding? I can hear the gears whirring in that big brain of yours from a mile away. And it's always a safe bet you'll be thinking about the most complicated thing around at any given moment, even at this hour of the morning." He ran a hand through her hair as he spoke.

"What time is it anyway?" She let her cheek lean against his chest and enjoyed the feel of his fingers. He shifted slightly and looked over at the clock on the bedside table. He cleared his throat in surprise.

"Even at this hour of the afternoon." he corrected himself and she grinned. He pulled her up to lie on top of him, wrapping his arms around her and she tucked her head into the crook of his neck, kissing the skin there gently. "I love you, Samantha Carter." She smiled and lifted her head to look into his eyes.

"I love you too, Cameron Mitchell." They kissed again, softly and slowly, both of them sighing happily. She caressed his cheek with light fingers and again she noticed the ring now gracing her left hand. "I love these rings, Cam. They're beautiful. I'm going to hate taking it off when I go back to Seattle."

"I'm gonna wear mine on a chain around my neck, make sure it's always over my heart." He grinned.

"You're such a hopeless romantic." She smiled.

"Mmm-hmm. When you're literally betting that your love will survive a time paradox you have to be." At the reminder of his promise at Jack's cabin she grew serious and looked into his eyes. She'd done this several times and she'd never ever seen any doubt in him. It gave her strength. A strength she found herself depending on.

"I believe you." she said softly.

* * *

Stargate Command, October 2009

The sound of a throat clearing startled Sam from her intense contemplation of the sensor data being displayed on her laptop as she sat in her lab. She looked up to see Cam leaning against her door frame, dressed in his civvies, looking rather nervous, which was unlike him. She frowned slightly. She wondered what could be causing her friend to look so uneasy, she couldn't remember anything that might have happened in their latest recon missions, or heard any news that might have given him pause. She glanced down at the screen of her laptop at the mission logs from the Hammond's search of planets on the Tok'ra list, which was proving less than fruitful, but none of this should be cause for any distress with Cam.

"Hey Cam, you heading out for the evening?" She looked at her watch and saw it was after 1800 hours, certainly not late by her standards, but technically the evening. He looked at her for several long moments before clearing his throat again and rubbing a hand across his chin. Okay, this nervous Cam was creeping her out.

"Ah, yeah, Sam. I was wondering if perhaps... you'd like to join me... for dinner. There's a nice Italian place in town and I know the chef... he'll make us up something special." His voice was hesitant at first, but grew stronger, by the end he was looking at her straight in the eye and the look she saw there had her frozen. It was that same look. From her dream of that time on Odyssey. That look he gave her just before he told her he... Holy Hannah. It was true, it was all true. They weren't dreams! Her mind was racing, going a million miles a minute and her heart was pounding so hard in her chest she was sure her lungs were turning to jelly from the concussive force, it would explain how hard it was for her to breathe just then. She watched his eyes a moment longer before she had to look down and she knew as soon as she did that it was a mistake. The shuffling of feet from the door brought her eyes back up and Cam was half turned away, a hand rubbing the back of his neck and a rueful smile on his lips.

"Cam, I can't-" she began, but his eyes again stole her breath away when he looked at her. This time dominated by a sadness and resignation. It wasn't a look she ever wanted to see in his eyes.

"It's okay, Sam," he smiled sadly, "you're right. Just..." He seemed at a loss, he turned to look around her lab for a moment before turning towards the door. "I'll see you tomorrow." He walked up the corridor towards the elevator, leaving her suddenly shuddering with painful breaths, an ache in her heart so acute it made her dizzy. She ran a hand through her hair and realised it was shaking. What had she just done? How could she have just... She'd just run away from him like in the dream. Not. A. Dream. It happened! Accept it! She wracked her memories of their time aboard that ship, and one thing stood out. One thing above everything else. Cameron Mitchell loved her.

She stood up and ran for the door. Skidding out in the hall she dove around the corner towards the elevators and waved an airman out of her way with a glare. Her pounding feet following the line on the ground that would take her to him. She realised now that he wasn't just asking her out for dinner. They'd gone for dinner together lots of times, both with the team and just the two of them. He wasn't asking her out to dinner. He was asking her to love him. She saw the elevator in the corridor up ahead as she rounded the last corner, saw him walking in and pressing a button on the panel, he wasn't looking up, he was just staring at his hands as he fiddled with his keys. Call out to him! She couldn't find her voice. The doors were closing, she was almost there. Dr. Lee came around the corner in front of her and she was sure they were going to collide, but he stopped just in time when one of the file folders he was carrying dropped out of his grasp to spill on the floor behind him. She turned sideways hoping beyond reason she had just enough time to slip through the doors before they closed and she did, running into Cam at full steam and slamming him bodily into the back of the car, pinning him against the wall, he looked confused at finding a breathless, flushed Sam pressed up against him, breathing against his neck, her hands resting against the back wall on either side of his waist.

"Sam?" he breathed, confusion, hope and wonder all mingling in his voice.

"Ask me again, Cam. Please!" she whispered into the skin of his neck, pressing her temple against his cheek. Hesitantly his hands came up to rest at her elbows. He cleared his throat, pushed her back slightly so he could look into her eyes and searched them for moments before he spoke.

"Sam, do you want to go out to dinner with me?" he asked, and again the look in his eyes betrayed what the question really was and she couldn't help the slow smile which spread across her lips.

"Yes." she whispered, but that wasn't enough for her now, she leaned forward again and found his lips with her own, melting against him as he wrapped his arms around her back. They didn't even notice the elevator doors open behind them. Didn't notice Vala and Teal'c staring at them for long moments until a knowing smile creased the raven haired woman's mouth and Teal'c turned towards her.

"Does this not mean that Daniel Jackson owes you a considerable sum of money, Vala Mal Doran." The Jaffa's tone might have sounded unperturbed to anyone who didn't know him as well as Sam, but she could definitely sense the amusement in it as she smiled against Cam's lips and leant her mouth away for an instant to look up into his eyes. She saw him grin and roll his eyes and she kissed him again.

"It certainly does, Muscles." Vala agreed as both alien members of SG-1 stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the living quarters level, pretty confident they knew the couple behind them would be making another stop before exiting the base as indicated by the only other button currently lit on the panel. "And let me tell you what he's going to be buying for me..." The doors closed as Vala was describing the plasma television soon to be installed into her quarters and Sam and Cam continued to explore each others lips behind their seemingly unconcerned teammates. The doors opened again to find Daniel reading a report held in one hand drinking from a mug of coffee held in the other. "Hey Daniel!" He looked up in consternation at the voice he heard only to scowl even harder at the scene taking place behind the owner of that voice and his Jaffa friend who nodded at him in greeting.

"Oh, for crying out loud! I'll take the next one!" he groused, and Teal'c merely nodded, bowing slightly and reached across to press the button to close the doors, Vala grinned and waved at him.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Chapter 7**

Petersen AFB Medical Center, Colorado, June 2004

Sam was startled as the door to the room she was in opened suddenly. She hurriedly wiped at her tear-stained cheeks, turning the chair she was sitting in a little further from the door to buy herself some time. She was having a very tough time seeing Cameron Mitchell lying in that hospital bed, his legs immobilised, most of the rest of him covered in bandages, a brace wrapped tightly around his neck, a breathing tube, hanging from his mouth and IV tubes trailing from his arms, and monitor leads going to several bits of humming, beeping machinery. Just about the only part of him that hadn't been seriously hurt in the crash in Antarctica was his head, only a few cuts marred his face, as well as some bruising. When she turned to see who had come in she saw an older couple, the man still powerful-looking despite standing on two crutches, his hair greying now with his advancing years. The woman was shorter than the man even as he was stooped on the crutches, her straight shoulder length blonde hair turning silver, a look of curiosity and concern overtaking her features. They must be Cam's parents come up from Kansas. She cleared her throat and stood up, looking towards Cam for a moment before facing the couple again. She should introduce herself, dressed in civilian clothes as she was they must surely be wondering who she was.

"Hello, I'm-"

"Samantha Carter," said the woman, "Cameron's talked about you so many times." Sam was surprised. "It's so good to finally meet you." She walked up to Sam and before she knew it she was engulfed in the woman's embrace. "Thank you for coming to see Cameron. He would be so happy about it, I know he would." She couldn't help but smile sadly.

"Wendy, let the Major breathe." The man walked forward steadily on his crutches and stuck his hand out to shake Sam's when Wendy released her. "I'm Frank Mitchell, this is my wife, Wendy. Thank you for coming to see my boy. Wendy's right, Cam told us a lot about you." Sam didn't know what to say, she blushed slightly.

"It's a pleasure to meet you too, Colonel," she addressed him using his old Air Force rank, he waved that formality away, "and you, Mrs. Mitchell. Cam spoke often of you both, and of his grandmother." Frank snorted.

"He spoke of her macaroons, you mean." Wendy joked and Sam smiled, nodding.

"I should give you some time with Cameron-" she offered, pointing towards the door, but both the Mitchells shook their heads.

"No, please stay, I'm sure he'd want that." Wendy Mitchell said reaching a hand out to push some matted hair from her son's forehead. "They said it was such a bad accident," Frank's features darkened slightly as his wife spoke, "that his legs were crushed and-" She stopped, bringing a hand up to her mouth and Sam shifted uncomfortably, while Frank moved in closer and placed a hand on his wife's shoulder. "Can you tell us what happened? How did this-"

"Wendy." Frank warned, but Sam interrupted him.

"It's alright, Mr. Mitchell. We were conducting training exercises in Antarctica, cold weather testing for new combat aircraft. Cam's plane suffered catastrophic engine failure after taking some damage in flight. He had to ditch into the snowfield when his ejector release failed. Unfortunately, it was a few hours before Search and Rescue could get to him." Sam's own voice was constricting as she spoke, the lies she was telling them didn't save her from reliving the real memories herself. Hearing his voice over the radio had been such a surprise at the time. She let her head drop and Frank sidled a bit closer.

"What aren't you telling us, Major?" he asked softly and she sighed internally, she couldn't tell him the truth, but she knew an outright lie wouldn't work on him either.

"Cam," she began, "he was protecting me when... when his plane took the hit, it had been meant for me." she breathed, it wasn't entirely false. It was in fact mostly true. "It was a simulated battle, but Cam saved my life twice that day. The second time he..." His mayday call rang through her head again and she couldn't help the flood of emotions rising in her. She didn't notice when Frank walked past her and quietly closed the door to give them some privacy. She barely felt it when Wendy wrapped an arm around her again. She just found herself crying into the older woman's shoulder.

* * *

Seattle, Washington, August 2009 (alternate timeline)

Sam closed the trunk of her Prius and wheeled the empty shopping cart to the little collection area nearby. She needed to make one more stop for electronic components and she could head home. With the delivery Cam made to her mail drop yesterday of some very fine molybdenum wire she could finally start assembling the last pieces for the communicator. Then it was just a matter of getting together and... She never completed the thought as a rumbling could be heard from the sky accompanied by the high pitched whine of jet engines, two F-16Cs if her ears didn't deceive her. She looked up in the direction the sounds were coming from and her mind froze for an instant as the Al'kesh swooped low over the business district and sped away.

"Oh, for crying out loud! We were so close!" she cried, rubbing the front of her shirt and feeling her wedding ring against her chest. She reached into her bag and retrieved the phone given to her by her handler and pressed the speed dial. Damn you, Ba'al.

* * *

Praxyon, August 2009 (alternate timeline)

Sam's fingers flew over the control interfaces of Ba'al's satellite control console, she had three different searches running simultaneously as well as trying her damnedest to lock out the rings that were letting wave after wave of Jaffa into the complex. On the one hand she had to admire the ingenuity of this stellar activity satellite monitoring and control station. A time machine with no need to directly manipulate time. Just find a star with flare activity, let the super computer crunch the numbers and open a 'gate to a destination on the other side. Truly a wonderful bit of technology. On the other hand she'd shoot the bastard in the head the moment she saw him.

"Sam!" Daniel yelled out and she knew why, she reached into the back of her trousers and turned, tossing her gun to him. She quickly turned back to the console to find one of her searches had a hit, a star hovered above the blue globe on the console and boxes with data and calculation results popped up beside it in Goa'uld and Ancient, she quickly scanned them, not exactly liking what they showed her.

"I've found one, but you're not going to like it!" she yelled over her shoulder, already knowing they were going to take it anyway she started working on programming the dialling sequence.

"Why not?" Mitchell asked while shooting a Jaffa in the head from beside the central tower.

"It'll send us back to 1929!" she replied. Just great! They'd have to live through the Great Depression.

"That's ten years too soon!" yelled Colonel Obvious. She chuckled mirthlessly, at least they'd be together for those ten years, with any luck long after that too.

"Well, it'll have to do, because I'm just about out of bullets-" Daniel's voice cut off with an agonised moan and she whipped her head around just in time to see him slip off the side of the walkway he was on. She blinked several times, too shocked to move, but gritted her teeth in determination. They were going to reverse everything. This wasn't going to happen! Her fists clenched then she turned back to the console and finished off the program which would begin dialling the 'gate at the optimum time.

"Once I dial the Stargate, we'll have less than twenty seconds to get through!" she yelled and set the program to running, the dialling sequence should begin in about five to ten seconds. She went back to trying to lock out the rings, hoping to at least alleviate the pressure on them from Qetesh's Jaffa. Holy Hannah! They'd better never tell Vala that she killed Daniel.

"Dial it up and get your ass down here!" Cam called to her just as she felt a stab in her lower back, then it was like liquid fire being poured directly onto her spine and she screamed, her knees buckled and she collapsed, the force of the staff blast sent her forward into the console then sliding down it as her legs just gave way.

"Carter!" Cam cried out and she managed to turn her head to see him running towards her. No, no, no, he had to run for the 'gate it would open soon. He had her in his arms and she couldn't help gripping the front of his jacket with one hand, looking up into his face as the corners of her vision started going grey and foggy. "Sam, don't you dare do this." he whispered under his breath. He was caressing her cheek, it felt so good, his fingers, calloused and worn, but so gentle, she closed her eyes for a moment at the sensation. "No! Baby, stay with me!" She opened her eyes wide at the sound of his voice and managed to focus her gaze onto his, now the pain made its way back to her conscious mind and she cried out again. He had to get through the 'gate!

"Cam, take... my ring... 'round my neck... make sure to give it to me again... you promised." she gasped out between coughs and cries of agony, all the while his soothing fingers were running along her temple, her brow, her cheek and lips. The hand which was supporting her from behind gripped at her neck and stroked the wisps of hair at the nape which didn't run up into the ponytail she was wearing. "Cam! Please! Get through the 'gate!" she whispered sharply with all her strength. She saw him nodding, tears rolling down his cheeks, she felt his fingers pulling at the chain around her neck and it slipped off when he undid the clasp. "Love... you..." Her sight was failing, all she could see were his blue eyes shining with tears, she wanted to remember those eyes so she closed her own, letting the imprint of them burn into her mind while the feel of his lips against hers filled her with warmth as the darkness crept closer. She heard him say 'I love you too.' Or it could just have been a trick of her misfiring brain before there was nothing.

* * *

P7R-117, December 2009

SG-1 moved quietly along the path back to the Stargate of the Lucian Alliance controlled moon, decked out in their black BDUs to reduce their visibility. They'd been sent to scout the base on this Earth sized moon orbiting a gas giant. Tidal stresses between the moon and the purple coloured orb taking up fully half the night sky overhead caused the core of the moon to generate extreme heat. It would be a perfect place to set up a new base to try and dial Destiny if the Lucian Alliance's presence were easier to dislodge. As it was it certainly catapulted the moon high into the list of potential candidates.

The team was not far from the 'gate when Teal'c, who was on point, raised a closed fist. Cam and Sam, crouched immediately with their P90s raised, scanning the rocky outcroppings to either side, Daniel and Vala turned to cover their rear in a similar manner. It was too dark to see anything, although thanks to the giant planet in the sky, not pitch black.

"You know where they are, T?" asked Cam quietly. Before the Jaffa could answer in the affirmative a single shot rang out and struck Mitchell in the chest, knocking him flat onto his back. Teal'c immediately returned fire, moving towards cover.

"Cameron!" cried Sam as she ran towards him and grabbed his tac vest by the collar, dragging him behind a large boulder, all the while noting that he was still conscious and that she could see the blood seeping between the plates in the vest, reflecting the purple light.

"Augh! Mary and Joseph, Sam, that hurts!" He coughed and she noticed flecks of blood on his lip, whether from spatter or internal haemorrhaging she couldn't tell. She unzipped the front of his tac vest and jacket and ripped them open, putting a hand over the wound she pressed down hard causing him to cry out and curse. Looking up she saw Daniel and Vala had also found cover and were returning fire at what she now realised must be a patrol from the base they'd just finished scouting. Ignoring all that she reached into a pocket on her vest and pulled out a pressure bandage one-handed, taking the wrapper in her teeth she opened it, pulled it out and similarly pulled the backing off with her teeth. After pulling down the collar of Cameron's black t-shirt she slapped the bandage over the wound, just below his collar bone. It was then she noticed the light glinting purple off something which had pushed itself up to the base of his neck, a ring on a chain, stained now with his blood running into some familiar looking filigree.

"I have to turn you over, Cam, to see if it's a through and through." He grimaced and nodded and she ran a hand under his arm and lifted him, turning him and running the hand under his vest and jacket she felt no wetness, so she eased him back down. The armour plates in his vest must have bled off a lot of the power of the shot, the bullet was still inside him. "Don't move, you hear me? The bullet's still in there." Again her eyes were once more drawn to the ring hanging from a chain around his neck, it had slid off him onto the ground by her knee and she couldn't keep from picking it up with one hand while the other pressed down over the bandage again. Bullets ricocheting off the boulder they were hidden behind caused her to duck momentarily and when she opened her eyes she was staring right at the ring she was running her fingers over, the blood that had flowed over it bringing the filigree patterns into stark relief in the purple light. She gasped when it finally hit her where she'd seen it before. It wasn't this ring but one almost identical to it. One that was currently resting in a small jewellery box in her quarters back at the SGC. Her eyes widened and time seemed to slow down for several heart beats as she stared at the ring. "Cam, where did you get this?" she breathed. How could she have forgotten about that ring?

"Huh?" He tried to look down towards his chest unsuccessfully and winced in great pain, gasping. She cursed herself for asking a gunshot victim about something so trivial in the middle of a fire fight, but it didn't seem trivial to her at that moment. Cameron also seemed to realise what she was talking about. "I was gonna tell ya about that, I swear. I jus' wanted things between us to progress a bit more." He turned to look at her and his eyes were a bit hazy with pain, but he was lucid. She dropped the ring and reached into another pocket on her vest for a morphine injector and stabbed his neck with it. "Gah!" It seemed a wave of pain caught up to him as he convulsed under her hand, his muscles constricting. The morphine would take the edge off soon, he just had to hold on. Sam was getting desperate though, if he moved the wrong way the bullet could dislodge and cut into the inter-clavicular artery, which it didn't seem to have done yet. If it did, Cam would bleed out in minutes. She pressed down on him harder. When she spoke her voice was slightly high-pitched and scared.

"Just hold on, Cam! You have to hold on, you hear me? Hold on so I can put that ring on your finger! Please, just hold on!" Her eyes were brimming with tears, but she dared not wipe at them with her hands, she'd already wiped at her forehead with them and she could feel the warm, sticky wetness of his blood against the skin of her face. He turned to look at her with his brows furrowed, then a grin formed on his lips and his brows rose in amusement.

"Sam, did you just ask me to marry you?" His voice was hitching with the pain, but the mirth was unmistakable. She froze as the realisation hit her of what she'd just said and she flushed crimson immediately in embarrassment.

"I-I-I guess..." she stammered uneasily and he giggled and winced at the pain, still the smile never left his lips. "Maybe I just did..."

"Well, Hell! I'm gonna live then. Just decided." he declared and she pressed her forehead down onto the back of her hand against his chest wishing he'd just shut up for once. "Now this ain't how I'd imagined it happenin', certainly wasn't expectin' it in a fire fight." She raised the fingers of one hand to place on his lips hoping he'd take the hint, but his smile was infectious. She felt the absurdity of the situation hit her like a ton of bricks and she groaned. "I'm gonna live so we can go back home an' ya can do it again proper." He was trying hard not to laugh as tears escaped down the corners of his eyes. "Maybe you can get down on one knee an' say a few words, maybe ask my Mom for my hand like a proper gentlewoman."

"Shut up, you patronising ass!" she growled through gritted teeth as much from embarrassment and an urge to laugh as in hopes of keeping him from aggravating his wound. She pressed down some more on his chest and he cried out.

"Agh auh. Think yer doin' a bit more damage than the bullet wound right now, Sam." He grinned at her though his eyes were filled with pain.

"Sorry, sorry!" She let up a little on the pressure. "But let that be a lesson to you! Just lie back, shut the Hell up, don't move and live!"

"Yes, ma'am, I promise." He smiled though his eyes fluttered as he fought to stay conscious. "It'll be my turn to ask you next." he said weakly.

"Oh, no, Cam! Stay with me, you hear?" Just then she noticed that the night was silent again and she felt a hand on her shoulder. Jerking her head up she noticed Teal'c looking down at her and Mitchell in worry.

"All threats have been eliminated, Colonel Carter. How is Colonel Mitchell?" He asked the question, but he was experienced enough to see how bad it was for himself and she knew it.

"It's bad, Teal'c, we can't move him. Vala!" she yelled for the raven-haired smuggler who bounded over with worry etched across her face at the sight of Cameron lying on the ground. "Dial the 'gate right now!" The other woman ran off quickly for the DHD to dial home. "Teal'c, take Daniel and cover us until we can get reinforcements from the SGC." He nodded and motioned for Daniel to join him. Sam heard the kawoosh of the 'gate and flicked on her radio. "Stargate Command, this is SG-1! We are declaring a medical emergency! Mitchell's been shot and can't be moved. Need a medical team and combat escorts right now! Area surrounding the 'gate is currently secure, but expecting company soon."

"Copy that, Colonel Carter." came Landry's controlled voice over the radio. "Medics are going to want to know what to expect." She knew he was ordering at least two SG teams on combat alert to gear up to head through the 'gate as well as ordering a medical team as well.

"GSW to the upper chest, left side, just under the collar bone. Vest took out a lot of the punch so the bullet is still in situ. Possibility of internal bleeding, applied a pressure bandage, but it's soaked through." She listed what she could with her limited knowledge.

"Copy that, teams will be at your location asap. SGC out." She heard the 'gate disengage as Landry signed off and settled in for a wait. It didn't take long, the chevrons around the gate started lighting up soon after and when the wormhole connected two fire teams poured out of the 'gate almost immediately followed by stretcher bearers and a small team of combat medics heading her way as she raised up a hand from behind the boulder.

"Sam, hold onto the ring for me, it's not exactly regulation." Cameron whispered with a soft smile, he was looking very pale even in the purple-tinged light. "It's a lucky charm." She snorted.

"Lot of good it did you today!" she said sharply.

"Disagree... you saw it an' proposed." He grinned and she had to laugh. She nodded and turned the chain around his neck to undo the clasp and take it from him.

"I'll keep it safe, I promise. Then I'll have something to show you back at the base." she said softly as the medics arrived and muscled her gently out of the way, she saw him nodding and smiling at her before she found herself in Daniel's arms, nearly collapsing.

"He'll be fine, Sam, I know it. You did good keeping him alive." He looked at her trying to make sure she was alright and she nodded resolutely, slipping the ring and chain into her pocket she took hold of her P90 decisively and motioned for him to take up position alongside the medics as they worked. Teal'c and Vala joined them as they kept watch for any more incoming Lucian Alliance patrols. Ten minutes was all it took for the medics to be satisfied enough to be able to move him, Sam fingered her radio and ordered the fire team at the 'gate to dial home. Mitchell was gently maneuvered onto the stretcher and carefully lifted up, tubes leading to IVs sticking from his hand.

"Form up, guys, let's get him home." The remaining members of SG-1 came in close to the now moving medics to escort their fallen leader. No one else came for them while they headed back which was fortunate. Cam was rushed to the OR and spent several hours in surgery while the rest of SG-1 was ordered to get checked out themselves and freshen up, and not to mount a vigil until a quick debrief could be arranged with General Landry.

After the debriefing Sam rushed back to her quarters and went for the jewellery box in her desk drawer, opened it and found the small velvet bag, upending it to let the ring and chain within spill out onto her desk. She picked it up and fished out the bloodstained ring from her pocket and held them up side by side. Cam's ring was larger of course, but she could see that the patterns in the filigree on her ring bled and ran into the filigree on his when they lined up, forming the seven symbol gate address for Earth. She let her index finger slip into both rings so she could raise her other hand to cover her mouth in astonishment, tears sliding down her cheeks involuntarily. Her heart was thundering against her chest and her breathing was heavily laboured as she blinked her eyes several times and held Cam's ring up to the light so she could read the inscription. 'To Cam, my heart, who brought me back home...' She couldn't believe it! It all fell into place! The 'gate traveller who gave Catherine her ring in 1929 was the Cameron Mitchell who went back through time to stop Ba'al's plot to take over Earth and the galaxy. She threw both chains around her neck and dropped the rings under her shirt as she ran for the door and the infirmary.

The rest of SG-1 was already in the observation room above the operating theatre, silently observing their team leader's progress. Teal'c was standing by the back wall and he nodded slightly as she came in, Daniel was leaning forward in his seat, one hand pulling at his lip as Vala was clinging to his other arm as she sat beside him. Sam passed by Teal'c to fondly run her hand along his arm with a smile, he returned it. Then she moved to sit next to Vala who jumped in surprise.

"Oh, Samantha!" She surprised Sam by letting go of Daniel and wrapping her arms around Sam's neck. "He'll be alright I'm sure of it!" Sam relaxed slightly in the other woman's embrace and patted her back affectionately.

"I know, Vala, he promised me he'd live." she said.

"Forget about promises," the former smuggler pulled back and wrapped her arms around Daniel's again, "Mitchell is just too stupid to know when he's supposed to be dead." She leant her head against Daniel's shoulder and he grunted his agreement with her sentiment. Sam shook her head.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Chapter 8**

Giza, Egypt, November 1929

Cam flew out of the event horizon staring at wooden beams pushing against an oddly angled corner at regular intervals. He felt an odd tugging as if he was being pulled back from where he'd just come while his inner ear was screaming at him that down wasn't down anymore, and he realised why. He was staring at a ceiling not a wall and the 'gate on this side wasn't upright, it was lying flat, which meant he was falling back towards it and the event horizon. He tried twisting in the air, as he finally got his bearings he realised he was a good ten feet above the ground and just starting to fall back down, which meant he only had a couple of moments before he was dematerialised against the event horizon of the incoming wormhole underneath him.

It was all for nothing. Losing Daniel, losing Sam, almost certainly losing Teal'c and Vala slash Qetesh. All of it for nothing because he was going to cease to exist once he fell into the shimmering blue pool he'd turned himself in mid-air to face. The tears he was still shedding since Sam died in his arms stung his eyes so he closed them. Let his last few moments be spent thinking of Sam. He let her smile play across his mind's eye, let the remembered melody of her voice soothe him and the gentleness of her touch play against his memories of her. He heard the gate disengage just before he was sure he was about to pass into it and he opened his eyes in alarm and hope just in time to slam into the wooden slats of the floor. It knocked the wind from him and there was something stabbing him in the side. When he could move he tried to roll onto his back, then gasped for breath when his diaphragm stopped its spasms. Coughing and clutching at his side he felt a wetness on his hand, blood. He moaned and cried out in pain from the fall and the gash he now felt in his abdomen. Turning again he saw the sharp angles of a small stone statue, red blood staining it as it lay on its side. That wouldn't have caused too much damage at least.

"Gah, Mary and Joseph!" The pain reminded him he was still alive and the memories of the last few minutes played out in his mind again. Watching her eyes shut as she said she loved him, he raised his hand to his temple, realised it was clenched tightly. He felt the metal chain against his cheek, opening his hand he looked at the ring resting against his palm and the sobs started immediately. She was gone. "No, no, no, no, no, no..." his voice trailed off into shudders as he curled up into a ball.

"Are you alright." The softness of the voice meant he almost missed it. He opened his misty, tear filled eyes and he saw a young girl crouched on her hands and knees, her head tilted so she could look at his face. "You're bleeding." He blinked, trying to think. Sam said the 'gate would take him back to 1929. Sam... He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed deeply, shuddering. Later, have to focus now. 1929. The Stargate is in Giza. Professor Langford would have been studying it. He opened his eyes and looked around, he was in a large wooden building, filled to its high rafters with shelves full of shaped rocks, fragments of pottery, the odd sculpture or piece of metal work. And a large space cleared in the center of the single large room where the Stargate was held aloft on a series of wooden trestles, held up to height of about four feet, obviously for detailed study of the markings on the inner ring. He tried to get onto his hands and knees, his right hand scraped against a hole in the floor and slipped in up to the elbow. He cried out in pain and his hand opened involuntarily, releasing the ring and chain he was holding. Looking at the hole, about a foot in diameter, bevelled on the inner surface, almost perfectly circular as if it had been cut out by a laser, he realised almost instantly that it had been caused by the vortex funnel from the rear of the Stargate created when the kawoosh reversed itself back into the event horizon, And now he'd lost Sam's ring in there somewhere. "Mister, what was that blue thing that came out of the ring?" He looked up at the girl and he realised who she had to be.

"Catherine, I need a light, please. I've just dropped something down this hole." he said, avoiding her question, hoping that hearing her name would convince the girl to trust him a little. She looked at him puzzled for a moment then looked down to his arm still elbow deep in the hole in the floor, a hole she probably didn't remember being there before. She nodded and got up, running to a shelf where excavation supplies were kept and retrieved a lantern. She quickly busied herself lighting it and ran back. Cam was peering into the hole when she got back, it couldn't be too deep. Probably just a couple of feet, like a raised floor. He thanked her and lowered the lantern into the hole, confirming his suspicions when he saw the hard packed, dusty ground below him. His eyes roved in the flickering light, looking for a reflection from the dirt and soon found it, laying the lantern down on the ground he reached towards the flickering he'd seen and his fingers passed over a chain in the earth, pulling carefully he managed to maneuver enough to get a good grip on both ends of the chain so the ring wouldn't fall from it and pulled it up, retrieving the lantern as well. He straightened, holding the ring in his hand and blowing the dirt from it. He knelt back onto his haunches unable to take his eyes off the platinum band.

"It's very pretty." came a gentle voice from just behind him. "Is it for your sweetheart?" He turned and looked into the face of the young Catherine Langford, barely eight or nine he guessed, before turning to look back at the ring. He cleared his throat.

"Yes. It's my wife's wedding ring. We were married five months ago," he chuckled involuntarily remembering where he was, "nearly eighty years from now." He laughed out loud then found it turning into sobs again, and he felt a small hand against his shoulder, he turned to the girl again. "I lost her. I lost her." He clenched his jaw and closed his fist over the ring. "I made a promise! I will make it happen!" His eyes flew open and he stuffed a hand into his jacket, reaching for the inside pocket, he sighed in relief to find the folded sheet of paper he was looking for and looked down at the ring again. It would drive him mad. He still had to live until he could kill Ba'al. If he didn't then nothing would matter. If he didn't push it away right now he'd go mad. He could grieve after Ba'al was dead. "I'm sorry, Sam. I need some time." he muttered softly. He turned fully towards the young girl and took hold of her hand as she yelped in surprise. "Catherine, listen to me. I need you to hold on to this for me," he dangled the ring on its chain in front of her and let it drop into her open hand as he held it up, "hold onto it and then give it to Samantha Carter. Understand? You must give this ring to Samantha Carter. Can you do that for me, Catherine?" She looked at him speechless and with wide, frightened eyes for several seconds before gulping and nodding. "Please remember that, Samantha Carter." He slumped slightly and winced in pain, looking down he remembered his injured side. The bleeding had stopped on its own, it just stung now. Not like Daniel's... "Oh, and remember the name Daniel Jackson, okay?" He looked at Catherine again. "Dr. Daniel Jackson. It's very important!" He stared into her eyes until she nodded again, her little fist clenched tight against the ring and clutched against her chest. "Thank you. I need a towel and some water. Can you get that for me?" She nodded and ran off. He looked down at his side then at the statue he'd landed on. Stabbed by the pointed ears of Anubis, right through his leather jacket. He had to clean his wound and any of his blood lying around here before he left. He looked off towards the door the young girl had ran out of. "Please don't bring anybody back with you." He muttered softly.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 3,315 days relative

Sam followed behind him into the flight bay, one corner of which he'd taken over years ago to put together his project. She looked over to it and was surprised to find the whole thing encased in a smooth metal dome and not the mess of wires and machinery she'd last seen a couple of years ago. She had very little call to come down to the flight bay. She was never going to have to go find Cam to make sure he fed himself. She hadn't known him to ever skip a meal in all the days they'd spent on this tub. As usual, he was the one who came to fetch her. The way he always had since their Academy days.

"That looks pretty slick, Cam. You've done a lot of work on it." she said, proud of him. He beamed at her over his shoulder.

"Sure did, once I got all the grav panels installed around the holosphere and checked all the power connections between them there wasn't a need to keep it lookin' like a bomb had gone off in here. He chuckled and walked her around the back where a control console and the main simulator computer resided, he flicked a few switches and a deep hum started as lights came on and a low rumble filled her ears. "I use the F302s main powerplant to actually power the thing, keeps it off Odyssey's grid, and it's not as if I'm gonna need it to actually power the engines. Took most of the thruster assemblies off it three years ago." She nodded at the ingenuity of his solution. Cam had, for a while now, been a proponent of making sure not to overly tax the Neutrino-ion power core the Asgard had installed. His reasoning was always 'Sam needs the power' and would look into other sources of generation whenever possible. He'd already cannibalised the small powerplants of several of the F302s to run some of Odyssey's seldom used systems. Sam just thought he liked it when she praised him. He motioned her to a sliding panel beside the console and she opened it, looking inside for a moment and blinking in surprise. It was as if she was looking at the flight bay except the domed simulator didn't exist. She walked to the corner of the building and looked around at the parked 302s opposite them and ran back to the door to look inside. There they were, they weren't parked exactly as in real life, but they might as well have been. It looked... real.

"Cam, I'm not even inside the thing and I'm already astounded." She looked at him in wonder. "This is amazing." He chuckled and she stepped inside. Cam took out a remote from the pocket of his flightsuit and pressed some keys on the screen and the scene flashed to display a black backdrop with superimposed gridlines in bright yellow. She laughed. "A spherical holodeck!" Cam chuckled.

"Yeah, though not a perfect sphere of course. It's centred on the cockpit, so it kind of ends about three quarters of the way down the lower hemisphere." He indicated where the floor levelled off. "Doesn't make much difference 'cause you can't really see those areas from the cockpit. Same with behind and below the 302." He indicated the large struts and jacks attached to the bottom of the fighter, which incorporated the entry gantry and steps as well as lifts to position the craft into the center of the sphere when the simulation was to start. They could also give the craft a jolt to simulate impacts. Cam led her towards the steps and she climbed up and got in the second seat while he climbed into the pilot's seat. He again played with his remote and the jacks lifted the craft up into the sphere and Sam watched the entry gantry fold away out of sight underneath the ship. "Alright, now the computer models the holoprojections based on the position of the cockpit from the ground. It'll do its best to properly warp and shape the image on the display panels and what gets projected as a hologram so it looks 'right' from anywhere the craft is, but it's better and simpler when the cockpit is at the origin of the sphere." He pressed the buttons and the holoprojectors came to life and it was like the craft was back on the flight deck 10 feet below with a perfect view of the flight bay around them. She leaned against the glass of the canopy as it closed and Cam was right, she just couldn't see the non-spherical section under the fighter. "I kept a lot of what some might consider useless stuff, like the landing gear, but I did it for a reason. All of those little things add to the tactile feedback, and it's one less thing I have to simulate. Hence keeping 90% of the actual fighter intact."

She could have sworn he kicked the thrusters into life just then, the back of her seat was rumbling just as it would had the thruster assemblies still been attached and she realised he'd put as much work into the interior of the ship as he had the exterior simulator. Just then she noticed something odd with the panel readouts in front of her.

"Cam, my console's readouts are in Ancient." she said in confusion.

"Oh, sorry! I forgot about that." he replied sheepishly. "Jackson's been teaching me Ancient and Asgard, it helps when interfacing with their tech to get the nuances. So I've been practicing everywhere I can." She shook her head and smiled, Cam Mitchell had become quite the scholar over these years on the ship, but he had promised to spend them productively after all. "Hit the center right button twice and then the top left three times, that will reset the language to English." She hit the selector switches around the display in the sequence he gave while boxes with options appeared on her screen and sure enough the screen blanked out and came back up in her native tongue. By that time Cam was 'taxiing' to the end of the flight deck and spinning the craft in place to line up for a take off. "Ready, darlin'?" he asked over his shoulder, they weren't wearing helmets, but then again, he had told her he'd switched off collision detection for this test flight and they weren't actually flying. She gave him the thumbs-up and he nodded and pushed the throttle open gradually, taking the F302 smoothly up to take off speed and out of the flight bay, climbing and banking right in a graceful curve she could actually feel. For a second she panicked, it felt so real she was afraid they were going to leave the time-dilation field and she nearly called out to Cam in dismay. Then she remembered it was a simulation and her jaw dropped. She looked out of the cockpit as he banked around Odyssey and saw it floating in space with not a single Ori ship in sight. She was just in orbit over P3X-474 as if on a pleasure cruise.

"Cam, I... I don't know what to say. I could have sworn it was real. I... I'm speechless." she breathed and he chuckled.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet, darling. I added grav plates for a reason, you know." He turned the fighter sharply and angled it towards the planet, she gasped at the beauty of it as it grew in her view and filled the windows. Then she started to feel it. The pull of gravity as they approached the planet. Cam levelled out into re-entry angles and she felt the shuddering and buffeting of the atmosphere. There were flames rising from the edges of the nose and wings! She held her breath in wonder as she was jounced along for another ten seconds before Cam kicked in the air-breathing jets with a huge whine and a whoosh. He again angled for a steep dive and they dropped through the planet's atmosphere like a rocket powered stone. Very soon they were at 30,000 feet and she heard the loud bang of the sonic boom as they broke the sound barrier and kept accelerating as they dove, she was definitely being pushed back into her seat. She could see surface features becoming more distinct and sharp as they descended, very soon they were at 5,000 feet and Cam started pulling out of the dive and she couldn't help it as she began whooping at the feel of the g-forces through the ships internal dampeners. "The grav plates are simulating real gravity levels and the dampeners are reacting to the internal controls and grav sensors just like they would in real life. Again, no need to simulate the reduced g-forces when I can get the ship's own systems to work as normal." he said once her exhilarated laughter had died down. He angled down and slowed back below the sound barrier, descending into the canyon they were overflying. She felt him weave left and right through the ravines then pitched the ship on it's side as they flew down a straight length of canyon, he inched the craft closer to the wall as she looked at the rockface flying by at 300 miles an hour not 10 feet beyond the cockpit, definitely projected inside the sphere as a hologram, not just displayed on the panels. Cam twisted away and up, throttling the engine to max again, leaving another sonic boom in his wake. She checked the speed a few moments later and they were pushing Mach 2.6 flying over scrubland and Cam kicked in the ramjets, and she felt the pounding behind her back as she was pressed into her seat again and their speed started climbing again past Mach 3 then 4. She was flying. She was really flying. She hadn't done this in nearly ten years and she had no idea just how much she'd missed it until this moment. The tears came unbidden to her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hands to stifle the sobs. "Sam? You okay?" Cam looked over his shoulder, throwing the fighter into a climb as he did so. "Sam, baby? What's wrong?"

"Can you stop it, Cam? Please?" she begged weakly. Cam instantly whipped out his remote and a quickly tapped in command sequence smoothly drew down the power in the grav plates and the holoprojectors showed the black background and yellow gridlines again. The fighter shuddered slightly as it lowered and the gantry unfolded itself to sit next to the cockpit once more and the canopy slid forward off to the edge of the nose. Cam clambered out and went to the back seat to take Sam's cheeks in his hands. He looked scared and panicky and she forced herself to smile. "That was the most amazing thing." He looked at her puzzled. "It was real, Cam. We were flying! Sweetie, you're amazing." She smiled as he wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.

"Baby, I did it for you. So we could fly together." he said and she stood up bringing his lips to hers as they embraced.

* * *

Cameron Mitchell's house, Colorado Springs, Christmas Day 2009

Cam checked his jacket pocket for the ninth time to make sure he had everything. Locking the door he turned towards the black Mustang parked in his driveway with the engine rumbling and smiled at Sam who was seated in the passenger seat with her hands up to one of the heaters in the dash. She was looking at him and smiling, her nose red with the cold and hooked her head back, mouthing a 'come on' from behind the glass of her window. He dropped the ring on its chain under his shirt and zipped up his leather flight jacket and fished out some driving gloves from the pockets and put them on as he crunched through the thin layer of snow which had fallen since he'd cleaned the path and driveway the day before. Today was the day. It was just him and Sam today. Daniel had finally relented, after months of cajoling, and taken Vala to Las Vegas. Sam warned him to stay out of any chapels and he had looked horrified. Teal'c was off-world, visiting Rya'c and his wife Kar'yn on Hak'tyl. Of course no-one mentioned that Ishtah lived in the same settlement. So Cam had Sam all to himself on this sunny, crisp Christmas Day. He walked around the car and got in the driver's side, when he closed the door he found Sam leaning over the gear stick and he automatically leaned over and kissed her softly, yep, that red nose was cold against his cheek, he smiled against her lips.

"What?" asked Sam as she pulled away.

"Your nose is cold." He put the car into reverse and took the playful slap Sam gave his arm, he turned to her smiling before carefully backing out onto the street and driving off towards Route 24 from his home just north of Old Colorado City. "Hey I like it. That's why I smiled." This seemed to mollify her a bit.

"Where are we going at this ungodly hour anyway?" She glanced at him and crossed her arms against her parka. "I was very warm and cosy under your duvet until your hateful alarm went off at 0500. I think I deserve an explanation." He looked at her sheepishly, knowing she wouldn't like his answer.

"It's a surprise." He tried to ignore the pointed scowl directed at him from the passenger's seat. "I brought something to listen to though." He fished into his jacket and retrieved the tape box in there, handing it to Sam who was pushing some strands of her sandy brown hair, that had not been tied into her pony tail, back behind her ear. She took the box and turned it over in her hand and her eyes widened. It looked the same as the tapes which had been stored in Cam's parents' house detailing the efforts of SG-1 to repair the time continuum from Ba'al's interference. She took out the tape and stuck it into the tape deck in the dash, pressing play.

"Cam, my boy," came the slow pronounced drawl of the eighty year old Mitchell, "this here is all the parts I didn't include in the report for the brass. Mostly 'cause it ain't any of their damn business, but also 'cause I gotta keep a promise I made to Sam." Sam's eyes widened as she listened to the old man speaking about him and his Sam kissing and starting a relationship at Jack's cabin in Minnesota and about how they could only see each other a few days every few weeks, but also how those days made them both so happy. When he came to the part describing their wedding in Mexico, Sam was speechless, holding a hand to her lips. He surprised her by stopping the tape there and reaching into his jacket again, fishing out a folded piece of paper which he handed to her. Sam unfolded it and her hands were shaking slightly as she looked at a marriage certificate with her name on it. She frowned slightly when she read Cam's name.

"Cameron James Mitchell? I thought your middle name was Daniel." She looked at him. He turned and shrugged at her smiling.

"I had an Uncle James, my Dad's younger brother, he died when they were kids. Way I figure it my parents in the original timeline gave me his name, but on the next go around after Ba'al was killed, they chose my great-granddad's best friend," he gave Sam a serious look, "Daniel Carter." Sam gasped then grinned. "Seemed he moved to Auburn after my great-granddad passed on and kinda made himself the unofficial guardian of the whole clan."

"You think-" she started.

"I do." he finished.

"That's so strange, Cam." she said in wonder. "Have you noticed anything else he's spoken of which didn't happen how you remember it?" At his shake of the head she reached over to start the tape again and looked hard at the certificate in her hand for a moment before pressing it against her chest under the parka she'd unzipped as the car warmed up. The older Mitchell carried on talking about his few days with his Sam, how they spent time with each other and with Daniel, how they worked together on the plans for the subspace communicator they were building, and the events which really took place when Sam died, not the edited version he'd left in his report, but exactly how Sam died in his arms. Sam stopped the tape and she had to close her eyes against the tears. Cam was sure the emotional and broken quality of his older self's voice on the tape was having a deep effect on her. The old man had had to stop several times himself as he related the events.

Cam looked down the road trying to find a spot at which he could stop for a bit, there was just snow covered trees on snow covered hills beyond deep snow covered run off areas dropping off on either side of the road, until he spotted a little entrance to what looked like a private road which he quickly stopped at. Reaching over he took Sam into his arms, careful not to knock the gear stick too much and she cried softly against his shoulder. He'd listened to the tape several times already and it still brought a lump to his throat the size of the Grand Tetons, but this had been Sam's first listen, and it was describing her own death. He stroked her hair and made gentle reassuring noises in her ear until she'd recovered sufficiently to pull away. He wiped the tears from her cheeks and kissed her gently, stroking her face. She sat back and pressed play on the tape again, listening as he described arriving in 1929 and finding Catherine Langford there when he came through the Stargate. Then his voice broke once more in remembrance and Cam watched Sam's face as the next words were spoken.

"Sam, if you're listenin', please forgive me. I gave Catherine your ring and told her to give it to you. If she didn't, I'm sorry, so incredibly sorry, but I just couldn't keep it with me. I had to live to be able to kill Ba'al. If I'd kept it I woulda gone crazy with grief. As it was I nearly didn't make it. After I ended him, I let myself grieve, darlin', I swear. I sailed back across the Atlantic and joined up with the RAF hopin' that maybe..." The old man's voice broke again and Sam stopped the tape and turned to look at Cam. The tears forming again didn't hide the look of anger in her eyes.

"You were hoping you'd be killed?" she demanded in a low angry voice. Cam sighed and nodded. "Did you think that maybe that way you'd do less damage to the timeline?" Her anger was ebbing slowly.

"That seemed to have been part of the reason." Cam offered sadly and winced at the flash of anger in her eyes again.

"You think I'd want you to kill yourself if I died?" Sam's tears were falling again and he reached up to wipe them away, he was glad she let him.

"No. I think I'm a selfish bastard who can't live without you." he said softly. She pressed play again and heard the same arguments that Cam had just iterated, spelled out by the Cam on the tape. He then went on to describe how he'd attempted to verify that the timeline had corrected itself, visiting New York in 1965 and New Mexico in 1968. Sam's eyes widened at that and recounted the story her mother had once told her of an old man who held her hand as she was in labour. She covered her mouth in awe before unpausing the tape once more to hear him describe his visit to an observatory in New Jersey in the summer of 1969, which confirmed to him that things had been put right. Sam was smiling happily at that and at the description of him visiting little baby Cameron in 1970. "Say, do you still have those rose-tinted glasses by any chance? He mentioned them in the note he included with the tape and the ring." Sam looked at him in surprise.

"Yes, somewhere, you want to see me in them maybe?" she teased him and he grinned, simply nodding.

They set off again and Cam realised they weren't far off from where he had to get off Route 24 and onto Green Mountain Falls Road. Sam looked out the window as he turned left and crossed over the opposite carriageway of the 24 and drove around the long curve into the small town in the middle of Pike National Forest. He followed the road past several houses and turned left onto the main street at the north end of the town. They drove past a little church building with a high angled roof, a bell tower at the corner and an establishment date of 1889 over the whitewashed doors. Further down they passed a deli on the opposite side and then turned left again around the Pine Gables Tavern and parked the car under some trees separating them from a small lake.

Cam got out, and walked to the other side of the car, waiting as Sam joined him and looked around the small town.

"It's a beautiful place, Cam, it really is." she said and looped her arm around his when he offered it to her. He lead her down the road a little past the line of trees until they reached a small bridge leading out onto the lake, benches and lamps lined the sides and on the opposite end was a small circular island with a square gazebo in the center, topped by a conical, peaked roof. The snow lay thick over the bridge, railings and benches, it piled high on the small island, the trees all around the lake were also blanketed in white. Sam breathed in a soft gasp and leaned in tight to him as he walked her out across the bridge, she turned on the spot and made a small circuit of the island to look at the views over the lake into the trees. "Did I mention yet, this place is beautiful." she breathed, a wide smile across her lips. She turned to Cam and the look he caught in her eyes caused him to smile slightly, she looked a bit afraid, as if looking at him like she knew what was coming. Well he had to admit to himself he'd never been the best at hiding his emotions at times and now was a big moment for him. "Cam?" Her voice was slightly tremulous and he reached out and took her hand.

"Sam, I brought you here because I wanted some place," he indicated the view around them, "magical, but most importantly, some place on Earth." He took her other hand in his and looked into her eyes. Oh, she definitely knew what was coming. If he had to, he intended to keep her here by holding onto her hands, but she didn't seem to be inclined that way. "I love you, Sam, I always have." As he spoke the words he saw tears forming in her eyes, but this time tears of joy and he pressed on with a smile. "I love you, from beyond time, from the other side of a paradox, from within memories which no longer exist. I love you, Samantha Carter and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you'll do me the honour of being my wife." She had started nodding halfway through and just launched herself at him, breathing 'yes' over and over again into his ear as she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. He pulled back slightly and kissed her deeply, tasting her, feeling her melt into him in the middle of this frozen, magical vista. He pulled back again and fished into his jacket for the third and final item he'd brought with him, holding it out in front of Sam so she could see the golden band and the diamonds running together in a small starburst on the top of it. "This was given to me by my Grandma. She told me to give it to a woman who loved macaroons." Sam laughed, but then came up short and looked at him in alarm. "I know, I know, we're gonna have to go apologise to her since you hate 'em. It can't be helped though 'cause you're the only one who could possibly wear this ring, Sam." She nodded, and grinned as he slipped it on to her finger after she ripped off her glove.

"I love you, Cam!" She wrapped her arms around him again, pressing her cold, red nose into his cheek. "Five months, five decades, I don't care. As long as it's with you."


	9. Epilogue

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate: SG-1, I am only playing in the world.

**The Times That Weren't – Epilogue**

St. Luke's Hospital, Upper Westside, Manhattan, July 8th, 1965

Cameron Mitchell shuffled down a corridor of the maternity ward and spotted a rather agitated man passing a hand through longish dark hair with black, round-rimmed glasses perched on his thin nose. He could hear noises from beyond the closed door the man was pacing in front of and smiled slightly. He reached the row of chairs outside the door and lowered himself into one of them, he regarded the nervous man with amusement.

"It'll be fine, son." he said and the man seemed startled to see him sitting almost right in front of him. "I'm Cam, what's your name?" He held out a hand which the man took hesitantly.

"Jackson, Dr. Melburn Jackson." He spun around at a particularly loud cry from behind the door and whipped around again at the chuckle he heard behind him.

"Not a medical doctor if your reaction's anythin' to go by." He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back in the seat, propping his head against the wall behind him.

"Ah, no, I'm an... archaeologist, I teach at Columbia University." The man seemed distracted, but talking seemed to be calming him down at least. "My wife Clare too, she teaches Ancient History."

"I'm sure your kid will be crazy smart then." Cam chuckled. "Got names picked out?"

"Yes. Uh, Daniel if it's a boy, that was my father's name, and Danielle if it's a girl, coincidentally that's Clare's mother's name." The man had stopped pacing and sat down at last and even chuckled at what he'd said.

"Good names." He nodded and smiled. Just then a muffled wail sounded from behind the door and Dr. Melburn Jackson sprang to his feet. "Oh. There we go. Bet it's a boy." The man leapt towards the door when it finally opened to reveal a nurse who ushered him in, telling him it was indeed a baby boy. "Take care of him!" Cam yelled to the beaming man and woman inside before getting up and walking away.

* * *

Holloman AFB Medical Center, New Mexico, December 29th, 1968

No one seemed to question the old man walking into the medical center, he had the air of a veteran about him and seemed to belong there. He heard a commotion behind him and saw a heavily pregnant woman walk in through the front doors, in considerable pain. He rushed over as quickly as his aged feet could carry him and helped balance her with a hand at her elbow and led her towards the front desk where a nurse was already calling for an attendant and a doctor.

"Easy there, ma'am, I got ya. Just breathe, slowly does it." he said as an attendant came over with a wheelchair and Cam eased her down into the seat. A nurse came over asking questions and the woman managed to identify herself as Joanna Carter, but the pain seemed to stop her after that. "She's the wife of Captain Jacob Carter," Cam supplied, "he's on tour in Vietnam right now." The woman fixed him with piercing blue eyes and he was filled with a sense of deja vu for a time. "Jus' breathe, darlin', nice and slow."

"And you are, sir?" asked the nurse.

"Mitchell, friend of the family." he said without hesitation. The nurse looked at Mrs. Carter who nodded quickly. Taking in how tightly the woman was holding on to the old man's hand she just nodded and led the way into the hospital. They met the doctor on the way who made a quick check of the situation and started explaining what could be expected of what was to come. Taking them into a delivery room they initially made to have Cam wait outside, but Joanna shook her head fiercely and gripped the old man's hand even tighter and they relented, admonishing him to just stand by the bed and try to help ease the woman through the labour. It took several hours, and a lot of sweat, tears and yelling, but eventually a tiny, healthy baby girl was swaddled and placed in her mother's tired arms. "Hello, little lady, what's your name?" he asked, letting the girl grasp at his wrinkled finger.

"Samantha. Her name's Samantha." Joanna said through her tears.

"Sam." He couldn't help the grin or his own tears.

"Oh, no! She'll turn into a tomboy if you call her that. She'll be a proper lady." whispered the exhausted new mother. She looked at the older man for several long seconds as the doctor and nurses busied themselves about the room. She glanced around her until there was enough distance between them and the staff and she lowered her voice further. "Thank you for being here, but who are you? Do you know my husband?"

"Like I said, ma'am," he began with a serene smile on his face, "friend of the family." He stroked the wisps of hair on top of the baby girl's head and she gurgled happily.

* * *

Rifle Camp Park Observatory, Paterson, New Jersey, August 10th, 1969

Cameron walked into the large dome and stared at the large telescope above the raised platform in the center of the room. Under it were two men talking quietly with each other and the old man smiled a very contented smile, letting out a little sigh of relief. One man was dressed in jeans, a white t-shirt and black leather jacket, topped off with a skull cap decorated with colourful beadwork. The other was a large dark-skinned man with a stern mien belying his colourful outfit of flared trousers, a pink puffed-sleaved shirt with a flower print waistcoat atop it, he also wore a bandanna tied around his head. It was really good to see them. It meant everything he'd done the last 40 years had been worth it. He almost couldn't keep his emotions in check, but the man in the leather jacket turned and saw him in the doorway.

"Hello there, sonny, doin' some solar observations today? It's a good day for it." He started walking towards the two men who shifted a little uncomfortably, but smiled at him nonetheless.

"Yes it is, and we are." the man replied, his companion merely nodded.

"Well, I'm sure you know already, but in case you've forgotten, make sure you're using a Hydrogen Alpha solar filter or-" Cam was cut off by a nodding, grimacing Jack O'Neill.

"Or I'll burn my eyes out, yes I know." He looked to Teal'c who had a small smile playing across his lips. Cam gave a short dismissive wave and leant against some of the equipment around the platform.

"Lookin' for anythin' in particular? Coronal mass ejections maybe?" he asked, grinning, knowing exactly what they were looking for.

"Flares actually." O'Neill said, Cam raised his eyebrows and pointed at Teal'c's trousers. "_Solar_... flares." Jack clarified after looking at what was indicated.

"They can't be predicted. Jus' hopin' to get lucky?" He couldn't help the small smirk which played across his lips.

"We are testing a theory." Teal'c said and Cam nodded.

"Sounds interestin'. I saw the bus ya got out of as ya came in. Colorado plates, that's quite a road trip. Must be for that big concert I hear's happenin' in upstate New York. Thinkin' of goin' myself to be honest." Cam said, going to Woodstock would actually be a bit of a dream come true for him. Just then a thought struck him. "Ya didn't pass through Kansas on your way, did ya?"

"No, sir, closest we came was St. Louis." O'Neill replied and Cam nearly laughed out loud at being called 'sir' by Jack O'Neill.

"So they were tryin' to punk me. I'll have to teach 'em a lesson." he muttered under his breath. "Well, you boys have fun with your observin'. I'm sure you'll find exactly what you need." He waved and started walking back towards the door. As he got outside he stopped to feel the hot summer sun against his skin, he decided he'd have to add a note to his future self to ask Sam about those rose-tinted glasses, see if she'd kept them. Now to go catch Jimi on stage.

* * *

Auburn, Kansas, May 25th, 1970

Cameron walked down the old farm road and turned when he heard a horn blaring behind him, holding up a hand at the car that passed him by and turned into the gravelled square in front of a barn and farmhouse. He carried on walking until he too reached the farm. He saw a broad shouldered man helping a blond haired woman out of the passenger side of the car with a swaddled baby in her arms, when he closed the door behind her they both waved at Cameron enthusiastically. The man hurried over after being shooed away by the woman who turned to walk into the house.

"Uncle Daniel! What are you doing here?" the man cried as he shook the old man's hand joyfully.

"I heard Wendy dropped a little boy in the hospital las' week so I decided to come visit the newest member of the clan. Ya know how long it takes me to get anywhere these days so I started off as soon as I heard, took me three days, but here I am. Thought I'd stay here for a few days if that's alright with you?" He happily handed off the pack he had shouldered, but waved away the offer of support from the beaming father as they walked towards the house. "How are they, Frank?"

"Wendy and Cameron are great and of course you can stay!" The Air Force pilot grinned, matching his pace to his grandfather's old friend from the Merchant Marine. "And what do you mean three days to get here, Daniel Carter? You only live a couple of miles away in town." Cam chuckled. Sometimes he still found amusement in his assumed name.

"Alright maybe I was exaggeratin' a little. Wendy's cousin Emma phoned and said you'd be comin' back today with the baby. Cameron, huh? I like it." Frank Mitchell smiled broadly as they finally reached the door and laid his houseguest's pack down at the foot of the stairs. Cameron noted he'd be able to leave the stuff he'd packed in the nearby closet easily enough, a shoebox with his name on it, marked 'Classified'. He preferred this audio tape plan than the fail-safe he'd left behind all those years ago, a safe deposit box at the local bank in Auburn, under the name Cameron Mitchell with a typed up mission report. He'd retrieved it all the day after Wendy Mitchell safely delivered her first-born son and proceeded to read out his report onto cassette tape. It provided another avenue for verifying the authenticity of it all.

"You hear that, Wendy? Daniel likes the name Cameron." Frank led the old man into the kitchen where the new mother was bouncing a happy baby in her arms.

"We've known for a very long time that Uncle Daniel has absolutely no sense, Frank." She smiled and accepted a kiss on the cheek from the old friend of the family, and handed the baby over to him, who burbled happily. "Are you staying for a bit, Daniel?" She smiled as he nodded. "Great, I'll make some of your favourite corn bread.

"Yer a treasure, Wendy." He grinned and looked down at the baby in his arms, into eyes so much like his own.

* * *

USS Odyssey, above P3X-474, May 2007 + 18,631 days relative

She patted his cheek softly with her hand, the wrinkles under her wizened fingers so familiar to her now. She looked up into his blue eyes, still full of the same enthusiasm and mirth as when he was that eighteen year old cadet she'd met all that time ago. He smiled at her and his fingers squeezed at her waist and he leaned in to kiss her again. It brought back the memory of thousands of other kisses they'd shared in the last half century aboard the ship, kisses filled with gentleness, passion, fire and anger sometimes, but always underneath all the rest, was love. She pulled back and leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder for the last time.

"I wish you would stay here with me." she said softly as he stroked her long grey hair.

"I know, darlin', but the General put me in charge when he passed. I gotta be on the bridge when I give the order. Have to do right by him." His Southern drawl had grown more pronounced the older he got, she had no idea how, perhaps it was just an affectation or he did it to annoy Daniel. Either possibility was likely. She signalled her acceptance of his implied apology by nodding into his shoulder before pulling back and looking once more into his eyes.

"Teal'c has sworn to keep everything we've experienced a secret from ourselves. I convinced him this didn't apply to the science and technology we produced here so my temporal mechanics studies and your power systems research is all included on the reverse of the crystal I've given him. Daniel added his notes from studying the Asgard databases, he felt like giving himself some pointers, your flight simulator plans are in there too if you want to build one." She smiled fondly at him. "All of Vala's and Teal'c's works are in there too, although I expect Vala will be too embarrassed by the some of the stories she's written and Teal'c will want to disseminate his political treatices himself. It's all there. Except the information you dug up about the Asgard consciousnesses embedded in the Deep Core. You're right, we should wait to discover them again on our own."

"We've done right by ourselves I reckon. I may hate this ship with every fiber of my being now, but I loved every moment I spent with you, Sam." He caressed her cheek as he spoke until his hand fell to her shoulder. "Even the fights, actually liked some of them probably a bit more than I should have." She chuckled and kissed him softly again.

"Good bye, my heart. I'll see you soon." She pushed against his chest gently and he acquiesced, backing away towards the door of the Asgard Core room.

"Good bye, beloved. See you on the flip side." He let his hand hover on the door controls a moment as he looked at her over his shoulder before opening it and stepping out.

* * *

Praxyon, January 2010

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Cam cried as the wormhole disengaged behind them, revealing the elevated walkways and central tower of the stellar activity satellite monitoring outpost which had, up until the previous year, been known only to Ba'al, who was now dead. Dead dead dead. As they stepped away from the Stargate, small rectangular panels edging the walkways and platforms lit up, illuminating the space with their weak glow.

"This definitely looks like Ancient technology." said Sam as she walked towards the walkway to the tower, she was heading towards the control console on the other end of a walkway at a ninety degree angle from the one they stood on with the Stargate. She passed her hand across the surface of one of the rings which encased the glowing core of the tower, before walking along towards the control console.

"Indeed, I have never seen such technology used by the Goa'uld. Ba'al did not build this." said Teal'c as he walked towards the ring platform.

"Maybe Anubis could have, he retained a lot of Ancient knowledge after all." posited Daniel as he examined the Stargate for the Point of Origin symbol.

"I don't think so, Daniel, this place looks ancient. As in old, not as in Alteran." countered Vala walking towards the central column. She stopped at a point about halfway between the 'gate and ring walkways and shuddered.

"This tech is Ancient in every sense of the word." Cam said craning his neck upwards as he joined Sam at the control console on its square platform. "Just like the old me described it on the tapes." Sam turned her head to him from where she stood in front of the main console and nodded, smiling. "Hey look here!" He pointed at an ancillary display on one of the angled sides of the control unit. "This says the capacitors are holding a truly gargantuan amount of power." Every head in the place turned towards him at once. Vala peaking out from behind the central tower.

"You know what gargantuan means?" she asked? Daniel scoffed at her which allowed Sam to ask the obvious question.

"Since when can you read Ancient?" She searched his face as he tried to bring any memory to the forefront.

"I... I dunno." He narrowed his eyes and frowned slightly.

"Since we were on Odyssey." Teal'c only breathed it and even so it carried to everyone in the space. Now they all turned to look at him in silence for several long moments until Daniel erupted.

"Okay. Can someone explain to me how things which _didn't_ happen can leave memories in our heads, because right about now I think I'm going to have to hand over another two hundred bucks to Vala." Daniel complained from the Stargate and Vala grinned, rubbing her hands together.

"It shouldn't be possible." said Sam, going into scientist mode. "When Teal'c ran the program on the crystal I gave him before reversing time in the time dilation field, it stopped the field from ever activating, none of those events took place." Deep down she accepted it was happening, but she hated not being able to explain it.

"Yeah they did." Cam said softly. "To Teal'c. Which means on some cosmic level they happened to all of us. Like the time loop created by us when we defeated Ba'al. The alternate timeline took place and we have physical evidence of it."

"Cam, that's not very scientific of you." Sam admonished, but stopped at the 'really Sam? please...' look he gave her.

"And yet I can read Ancient, a language I've never learned, oh," he reached over and pressed a few buttons on the display and they flickered and came back, written with runes. "and Asgard too, apparently."

"Shut up!" cried Daniel striding over to check the display. Sam just looked at Cam incredulously. He grinned at her.

"Wait a minute." said Vala, walking slowly around the tower and standing at the edge of the walkway to the control console. "You said you had physical evidence of the alternate timeline where, amongst other things, I was Ba'al's queen." She shuddered in disgust.

"And you killed him." added Teal'c walking around the other side of the tower.

"And Daniel and Sam, yay me." she added more quietly before looking up again to lock eyes with Daniel who smiled at her sadly. She cleared her throat quickly. "What physical evidence? Not the tapes because they're from this timeline, and not the old Cam 'cause he's from the timeline before Ba'al altered things." Cam turned to Sam with a sheepish grin and she blushed red.

"Um," she faltered slightly not meeting Vala's eyes, "a pair of wedding rings and a marriage certificate." She focused all her attention on the console in front of her despite not being able to read it herself. "Why didn't I learn Asgard on Odyssey?" She tried to deflect the oncoming storm, but was unsuccessful. Vala squealed and bounded over to Sam and clutched at her arm, jumping up and down.

"Story time, Samantha!" she cried in delight and Sam looked ruefully at Cam before turning to her friend.

"Later, Vala. We don't have time now." she said firmly and Vala pouted, Daniel looked at Cam appraisingly for several moments before taking Vala in hand and dragging her away. "Can you switch this to something I can read again, please?" She gave Cam a look, which he grinned at, and pressed some buttons on a console, turning the display back to Goa'uld, which Ba'al had programmed in. "Thank you." She pressed some buttons and stared for a few moments. "You're right about the power levels. That," she pointed at the central column, "is more than just a power core with computing and processing elements. It's a physical power tap and shunt into the planet's core. The Stargate is tied into it as well. There is more than enough power in this place to dial Destiny."

"Not very homey though." said Vala from where she was standing by Teal'c and Daniel. "Now I'm an alien and I don't care about these things, but I've seen General Landry ranting about something like 'Health and Safety can kiss my ass' and I would think this place qualifies." She looked around at the obvious lack of guard rails and her eyes strayed to Daniel again. "I can't imagine a scientist could live in a place like this for very long, no matter how much they like solar flares."

"Woman's got a point, Sam." Cam turned to her, resting his hand on his P90. "Let me switch this to Ancient and do some digging with Daniel. Something tells me Ba'al didn't have much use for any possible living accommodations in this place." Sam nodded and waved Daniel over while she went to stand by Teal'c. The large Jaffa nodded to her with a smile before looking further around the huge space.

"I am reminded of Star Wars." he said with a broad smirk and she chuckled. She had to agree, a fondness for lots of vertical space and a dislike of guardrails was definitely very 'Star Wars'. A sound of discovery came from the two men at the console as Daniel pointed to something and Cam pressed some buttons, then looked over his shoulder at the wall to their left. A loud grinding noise was heard and a walkway shot out from the wall across from Sam and thrust into the central platform near her feet, halfway between the ring walkway and the console walkway. The new walkway shuddered for a second and, at its other end, a panel in the rock wall which hadn't been there a moment before slid aside revealing another door.

"If we are very, very lucky, folks," Cam began, bringing his P90 up and flicking on the flashlight at the top of it. "We just bagged ourselves a new off-world base. Let's go explore!" He grinned and Sam flicked her P90's flashlight on and stepped in beside him as they crossed the walkway together and into the darkness beyond the doorway.

* * *

To be continued in 'The Ninth Chevron'


End file.
